PRINCETON,     N.    J. 


Division     \  .^  .  I '. .  £_«.    1 

Section  .,.X^. ...  \  .  O ■  -^ 
Shelf. Number 


MENTAL    DEVELOPMENT 
IN    THE   CHILD    AND   THE    RACE 

METHODS  AND   PROCESSES 


.mm 


MENTAL    DEVELOPMENT 


IN 


THE  CHILD  AND  THE  RACE 


METHODS    AND    PROCESSES 


BY 


JAMES    MARK    BALDWIN,  M.A.,  Ph.D. 

Stuart  Professor  of  Psychology  in  Princeton  University;   Author  of 

"Handbook  of  Psychology,"  "Elements  of  Psychology"; 

Co-Editor  of  "The  Psychological  Review" 


WITH    SEVENTEEN    FIGURES    AND    TEN    TABLES 


N£h3  gorfe 
MACMILLAN     AND     CO. 

AND    LONDON 
1895 

All  rights  reserved 


Copyright,  1894, 
By  MACMILLAN   AND  CO. 


Norfajaoti  ^9rfS3 : 

J.  S.  Gushing  &  Co.      Berwick  &  Smith. 

Boston,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


FILIOLIS   .   MEIS 


PREFACE 


In  writing  this  book  I  have  had  rather  conflicting  aims.  It 
was  begun  as  a  series  of  articles  reporting  observations  on  in- 
fants, published  in  part  in  the  journal  Science,  1890-1892.  In 
the  prosecution  of  this  purpose,  however,  I  found  it  necessary 
constantly  to  enlarge  my  scope  for  the  entertainment  of  a  wid- 
ened genetic  view.  This  came  to  clearer  consciousness  in  the 
treatment  of  the  child's  imitations,  especially  when  I  came  to 
the  relation  of  imitation  to  volition,  as  treated  in  my  paper  be- 
fore the  London  Congress  of  Experimental  Psychology  in  1892. 
The  farther  study  of  this  subject  brought  what  was  to  me  such  a 
revelation  of  the  genetic  function  of  imitation  that  I  then  deter- 
mined —  under  the  inspiration,  also,  of  the  small  group  of  writers 
lately  treating  the  subject  —  to  work  out  a  theory  of  mental  devel- 
opment in  the  child,  incorporating  this  new  insight. 

This  occupied  my  thought,  and  was  made  the  topic  of  my 
graduate  Seminar  in  psychology  at  Princeton,  in  1893-94,  the 
result  being  the  conviction  that  no  consistent  view  of  mental 
development  in  the  individual  could  possibly  be  reached  with- 
out a  doctrine  of  the  race  development  of  consciousness, — 
i.e.,  the  great  problem  of  the  evolution  of  mind. 

I  then  fell  to  reading  again  the  literature  of  biological  evolu- 
tion, with  view  to  a  possible  synthesis  of  the  current  biological 
theory  of  organic  adaptation  with  the  doctrine  of  the  infant's 
development,  as  my  previous  work  had  led  me  to  formulate  it. 
This  is  the  problem  of  Spencer  and  Romanes.     My  book  is  then 


viii  Preface. 

mainly  a  treatise  on  this  problem;  but  the  method  of  approach 
to  it  which  I  have  described,  accounts  for  the  preliminaries  and 
incidents  of  treatment  which  make  my  book  so  different  in  its 
topics  and  arrangement  from  theirs,  and  from  any  work  constructed 
from  the  start  with  a  *  System  of  Genetic  Psychology  '  in  view. 

For  this  reason  the  question  of  arrangement  was  an  excessively 
difficult  one  to  me.  The  relations  of  individual  development 
to  race  development  are  so  intimate  —  the  two  are  so  identical, 
in  fact  —  that  no  topic  in  the  one  can  be  treated  with  great 
clearness  without  assuming  results  in  the  other.  So  any  order  of 
treatment  in  such  a  work  must  seem  finally  to  be  only  the  least 
of  possible  evils. 

My  final  arrangement  of  chapters  presents,  however,  when  a 
patient  reader  is  in  front  of  the  page,  a  fair  degree  of  reason,  I 
think.  The  earliest  chapters  (I.  to .  VI.)  are  devoted  to  the 
statement  of  the  genetic  problem,  with  reports  of  the  facts  of 
infant  life  and  the  methods  of  investigating  them,  and  the  mere 
teasing  out  of  the  strings  of  law  on  which  the  facts  are  beaded  — • 
the  principles  of  Suggestion,  Habit,  Accommodation,  etc.  These 
chapters  have  their  own  end  as  well,  giving  researches  of  some 
value,  possibly,  for  psychology  and  education.  They  serve  their 
purpose  also  in  the  progress  of  the  book,  as  giving  a  statement 
of  the  central  problem  of  motor  adaptation.  Chapter  V.  gives  a 
detailed  analysis  of  one  voluntary  function.  Handwriting.  Then 
follows  the  theory  of  adaptation,  stated  in  general  terms  in  Chap- 
ters VTI.  and  VHI. ;  and  afterwards  comes  a  genetic  view  in 
detail  (Chaps.  IX.  to  XVI.)  of  the  progress  of  mental  devel- 
opment in  its  great  stages,  Memory,  Association,  Attention, 
Thought,  Self-consciousness,  Volition.  So  the  whole  is  a  whole, 
the  theory  resting  upon  an  induction  of  facts  (put  before  it)  and 
supported  by  the  deduction  of  facts  (put  after). 


Preface.  ix 

The  book  really  represents,  therefore,  five  years  of  very  close 
work;  and  the  distribution  of  the  topics  over  this  period  accounts 
for  the  fact  that  the  chapters,  in  many  instances,  include  in 
more  or  less  modified  form  articles  which  I  have  contributed  to 
the  reviews.  It  will  now  be  clear  that  all  were  written  in  the 
course  of  development  of  one  intellectual  impulse,  and  so  have 
their  only  adequate  presentation  and  justification  in  this  volume. 
I  am  indebted  to  the  editors  and  publishers  of  certain  journals 
for  this  present  use  of  some  of  the  material,  e.g.,  Mind,  The 
Philosopliical  Review,  The  Psychological  Review,  The  American 
Journal  of  Psychology,  The  Popular  Sciettce  Monthly,  The  Cen- 
tury Magazine,  Science,  The  Educational  Review. 

There  are  certain  other  great  provinces,  besides,  which  I  find 
capable  of  fruitful  exploration  with  the  same  theoretical  prin- 
ciples. Of  course,  genetic  psychology  ought  to  lay  the  only  solid 
foundation  for  education,  both  in  its  method  and  its  results. 
And  it  is  equally  true,  though  it  has  never  been  adequately  real- 
ized, that  it  is  in  genetic  theory  that  social  or  collective  psychol- 
ogy must  find  both  its  root  and  its  ripe  fruitage.  We  have  no 
social  psychology,  because  we  have  had  no  doctrine  of  the  socius. 
We  have  had  theories  of  the  ego  and  the  alter ;  but  that  they  did 
not  reveal  the  socius  is  just  their  condemnation.  So  the  theorist 
of  society  and  institutions  has  floundered  in  seas  of  metaphysics 
and  biology,  and  no  psychologist  has  brought  him  a  life-preserver, 
nor  even  heard  his  cry  for  help.  These  aspects  of  the  subject  I 
hope  to  take  up  in  the  same  modest  way  in  another  work,  already 
well  under  way,  to  bear  the  same  general  title  as  this  volume,  but 
to  be  known  by  the  sub-title  Interpretations  :  Educational,  Social, 
and  Ethical,  in  contrast  with  the  Methods  and  Processes,  by 
which  this  book  is  described  more  particularly  on  the  title-page. 
It  will  endeavour  to  find  a  basis  in  the  natural  history  of  man  as 


X  Preface. 

a  social  being  for  the  theory  and  practice  of  the  activities  in 
which  his  life  of  education,  social  co-o[)eraliun,  and  duty  inv^olves 
him. 

Many  of  the  particular  points  of  view  of  this  proposed  work 
are  indicated  by  foot-notes  in  this  volume,  on  pages  where  the 
principles  discussed  strike  deeper  into  the  social  life.  Such 
intimations  are  especially  brought  out  in  Chapters  X.  to  XVI. 

The  classes  of  men  whom  I  hope  therefore  to  interest  are  first, 
of  course,  psychologists, —  in  my  theories, —  and  then  teachers 
and  writers  on  education  —  in  the  outcome.  I  have  not  had  the 
latter  class  in  mind  as  much  in  this  book  as  I  do  in  the  later 
one,  for  obvious  reasons;  but  yet  I  hope  the  treatment  will  be 
found  untechnical  enough  to  profit  teachers  who  are  not  professed 
psychologists.  To  this  end  all  the  original  observations  and 
experiments  on  children  which  are  scattered  through  the  book 
are  gathered  in  a  list  in  Appendix  I. 

Then  there  are  the  biologists  —  one  almost  despairs  of  them ! 
Are  there  any  yet  born  to  follow  the  two  I  have  named  in  finding 
mind  as  interesting  as  life?  We  must  believe  that  the  future  is 
big  with  them, —  and  the  near  future,  too.  But  if  any  biologist 
is  willing  to  listen,  he  may  care  to  recognize  in  the  chorus  of 
those  who  are  singing  the  praise  of  the  ruler  of  our  time,  the 
naturalist,  and  playing  to  him  on  instruments  —  the  tibia  of  the 
archaic  horse,  the  antennae  of  the  hymenoptera,  the  many  stops 
of  the  hydra's  legs  —  the  plaintive  note  of  one  who  but  tries  to 
interpret  the  wail  of  the  human  babe!  But  I  am  not  prepared 
to  dispute  the  point  with  any  of  my  readers  who  find  such  an 
expectation  quite  too  optimistic. 

There  is  one  point  in  the  range  of  the  great  topic  of  develop- 
ment itself  to  which  I  wish  to  refer,  in  order  to  avoid  misun- 
derstanding.     I  believe  in  the  widest  possible  expansion  of  the 


Preface.  xi 

idea  of  natural  history  as  applied  to  consciousness.  But  I  also 
believe  that  the  natural  history  question  is  not  the  same  as  the 
question  of  the  essence  or  nature  or  explanation  of  mind.  Phil- 
osophy has  its  problem  just  the  same,  however  consciousness 
arose,  and  no  amount  of  evolution  theory  can  settle  the  problem 
set  by  philosophy.  I  hope  to  take  up  this  question  of  origin 
vs.  nature  in  the  later  volume  of  'Interpretations.'  In  the  mean- 
time it  may  serve  to  inform  any  who  may  take  my  book  seriously 
enough  to  care  what  my  metaphysical  views  are,  to  say  that,  as 
far  as  I  am  willing  to  label  them  beforehand,  they  fall  in  the  very 
indefinite  category  known  to  some  under  the  phrase  'Ethical  or 
Spiritual  Idealism. '  This  declaration  may  be  the  more  appro- 
priate since  it  is  not  the  type  of  thought  which  is  represented  by 
the  two  men  to  whom  my  allusions  above  show  something  of  my 
sense  of  profound  and  lasting  indebtedness  in  the  development 
of  the  main  topic  of  this  book,  —  Herbert  Spencer  and  the  late 
lamented  George  John  Romanes. 

I  wish  in  conclusion  to  express  my  personal  indebtedness  tc 
my  friends,  James  McKeen  Cattell,  William  James,  and  Henry 
Fairfield  Osborn, —  especially  to  the  first  named, —  for  reading 
each  more  or  less  of  my  manuscripts,  and  making  suggestions 
utilized  in  the  text.  My  thanks  are  also  due  to  my  friend  and 
assistant,  Mr.  H.  C.  Warren,  for  assistance  with  the  proof-sheets. 

J.   M.    B. 

Princeton,  N.  J.,  December,   1894. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER   I. 

Pages 

Infant  and  Race  Psychology 1-35 

§  I.    Infant  Psychology  :  Ontogenesis,  the  Genetic  Point  of  View  1-15 

§2.    Race  Psychology :   Phylogenesis 12-15 

§3.    Analogies  of  Development :   Epochs  of  Development .         .  15-20 
§  4.    Variations  in  Ontogeny :  Organic  and  Mental  Recapitula- 
tion        20-35 

CHAPTER   II. 

A  New  Method  of  Child  Study 36-49 

§  I.    Critical:   Earlier  Methods 36-4? 

§  2.    Expository  :  the  Dynamogenic  Method       ....  42-47 

§  3.    Formula  of  the  Dynamogenic  Method         ....  47-49 

CHAPTER    III. 

Distance  and  Colour  Perception  by  Infants     ....  50-57 

§  I.    Experimental:  Colour,  Distance 50-55 

§2.    Critical:   Estimate  of  Results 55~57 

CHAPTER   IV. 

The  Origin  of  Right-handedness 59-^9 

v^  I .    Experimental :   Arrangements  and  Results  ....  59-^5 
§  2.    Interpretation :     Neurological    and    Race  Considerations  ; 

Modification  of  Formula  of  Method       ....  65-So 

CHAPTER   V. 

Infants'  Movements 81-103 

§  I.    Descriptive:     Reflexes;    the    Child's    Drawings;     Rise   of 

Tracery  Imitation          .......  81-91 

xiii 


xiv  '         Contoits. 

§  2.    Interpretation  of  Tracery  Imitation:   The  Origin  and  An-  Pages 

alysis  of  Handwriting 91-103 


CHAPTER   VI. 


104-169 
104-109 
109-115 


)erative  Sugges- 


■no 


130-135 


Suggestion 

{^  I.    Definition  and  Criticism    . 

§  2.    Physiological  Suggestion  , 

§  3.    Sensori-motor :  General,  Personality,  D 
tion    .         .         .         .         . 

§  4.    Ideo-motor :    Simple    Imitative    Suggestion,    Resume    of 
Suggestions  of  Infancy 

§5.    Subconscious  Adult  Suggestion :    Tune-suggestion,  Influ- 
ence of  Dreams,  Auto-suggestion,  Sense-exaltation    .      135-143 

§  6.    Inhibitory  Suggestion  :  Pain,  Control,  and  Contrary  Sug- 
gestion ;    Bashfulness 143-158 

§7.    Hypnotic  Suggestion  :    the  Facts,  the  Theory  .         .         .      158-165 

§8.    The  Law  of  Dynamogenesis :   Habit  and  Accommodation     165-169 

CHAPTER   VIE 

The  Theory  of  Development 170-220 

§  I.    Organic  Adaptation  in  General 170-180 

§  2.    The    Current   Theory   of  Adaptation :    Darwin,  Spencer, 

Bain 180-204 

§  3.    Development  and  Heredity  :    Neo-Darwinism  and  Neo- 

Ea  mark  ism           ........  204-20S 

§4.    The  Origin  of  Consciousness     ......  208-214 

§  5.    Outcome :   Habit  and  Accommodation      ....  214-220 

CHAPTER   VIII. 

The  Origin  of  Motor  Attitudes  and  Expressions  .        .        .  221-262 

§  I.    General  View 221-223 

§  2.    The  Theory  of  *  Emotional  Expression  ' :  Applications  of 

Principles  of  Habit,  Accommodation,  Dynamogenesis  223-237 

§  3.    Hedonic  Expression  and  its  Law 237-239 

§  4.    Habitual  Motor  Attitudes  :  Principles  of  Antithesis,  Asso- 
ciated Habits,  Analogous  Stimuli         ....  239-262 


Contents. 


XV 


CHAPTER   IX. 

Pages 

Organic  Imitation 263-290 

§  I.  The  General  Question 263-268 

§  2.  The  Neurological  Question        ......  268-279 

§  3.  The  Physical  Basis  of  Memory  and  Association         .         .  279-290 


CHAPTER    X. 

Conscious  Imitation  (begun)  :   The  Origin  of  Memory  and 

Imagination 

§  I.    General  Facts  and  Explanations 

§  2.    The  Origin  of  Memory  and  Association    . 

§  3.    Assimilation  and  Recognition  .... 

§  4.    Phylogenetic  Value  of  Memory  and  Imagination 


291-321 
291-301 
301-307 
308-319 
319-321 


CHAPTER   XL 

Conscious  Imitation  (continued)  :   The  Origin  of  Thought 

and  Emotion 322-348 

^  I .    Conception  and  Thought 322-330 

§  2.    Conception  as  Class-recognition 33^-332 

§3.    Emotion  and  Sentiment :   Self  and  the  Social  Sense .         .  332-348 


CHAPTER    XII. 

Conscious  Imitation  (concluded) 349-3^6 

§  I.    Classification 349-352 

§  2.    Plastic  Imitation 352-35^ 

§  3.    How  to  observe  Imitation  in  Children       ....  357-366 

CHAPTER   XIII. 

The  Origin  of  Volition 367-430 

§1.    Analysis  of  Volition:  Deliberation,  Desire,  Effort    .         .  3^7-373 
§  2.    The  Typical  Case  of  Rise  of  Volition  in  the  Child :   Per- 
sistent Imitation 373-3^5 

§  3.    Phylogenetic 385-388 

§  4.    Special  Evidence 388-426 

§  5.    Ontogenetic  :  Variations  in  the  Rise  of  Volition  426-430 


XVI 


Contents. 


CHAPTER   XIV. 

The  Mechanism  of  Revival:  Internal  Speech  and  Song 
§  I.    Internal  Speech:   How  do  we  think  of  Words? 
§2.    Internal  Song:   How  do  we  think  of  Tunes?    . 
§  3.    Pitch  Recognition:   How  do  we  know  Notes? 


Pages 
431-450 

432-438 
438-442 
442-450 


CHAPTER  XV. 

The  Origin  of  Attention 45^-475 

§1.    Voluntary  Attention 451-458 

§2.    Reflex  and  '  Primary '  Attention 458-459 

§  3.    The  Development  of  Attention :  Sensori-motor  Associa- 
tion       459-472 

§  4.    Voluntary  Acquisition  and  Control 472-475 

CHAPTER   XVI. 

Summary:  Final  Statement  of  Habit  and  Accommodation   .  476-488 

§  I.    Summary  of  Theory  of  Development         ....  476-480 

§  2.    Interaction  of  Habit  and  Accommodation         .         .         .  480-481 

§  3*    Organic  Centralization  :  Pain,  Attention  ....  481-488 


APPENDIX  A.      Glossary  of  New  Observations  on   Chil- 
dren           489-490 

APPENDIX  B.    Colonel  Mallery  on  Sign  Languages  .        .  490-492 

INDEX 493-496 


MENTAL    DEVELOPMENT    IN    THE 
CHILD    AND    THE    RACE. 


3j«<C 


CHAPTER    I. 

Infant  and  Race  Psychology. 

The  study  of  psychology  has  had  so  remarkable  a  de- 
velopment in  recent  years,  and  the  standpoint  from  which 
it  is  now  approached  is  so  unlike  the  point  of  view  of 
older  writers  on  mental  philosophy,  that  the  several  de- 
partments which  it  now  comprises  stand  in  need  of  sepa- 
rate introductions  ;  and  not  only  are  such  introductions 
necessary  for  purposes  of  exposition,  but  their  apologetic 
function,  though  reduced  to  a  minimum,  is  still  real.  The 
expression  'nursery  psychologist'  no  doubt  means  what 
its  author  intended  it  to  mean,  to  some  others  than  him- 
self ;  and  it  is  desirable  that  it  should  be  understood  by 
the  educated  public  as  a  badge  of  honourable  service 
rather  than  as  a  phrase  of  disparagement  and  discredit. 

§    I.    Infant  Psychology :    Ontogenesis. 

No  doubt  we  owe  to  the  rise  of  the  evolution  idea  som"e- 
thing  at  least  of  the  benefit  brought  about  by  what  we  may 
call  the  psychological  renaissance  of  the  last  twenty-five 

B  I 


2  Infant  and  Race   Psychology. 

or  thirty  years.  The  breadth  of  the  current  conception  of 
psychology  is  certainly  in  harmony  with  the  conceptions 
long  ago  current  in  other  departments  of  scientific  research  ; 
but  there  is  a  phase  of  this  broadening  of  psychological 
inquiry  strikingly  brought  out  only  when  interpreted  in 
the  light  of  evolution  doctrine.  This  is  what  we  may 
call  the  genetic  phase,  the  growth  phase.  The  older  idea 
of  the  soul  was  of  a  fixed  substance,  with  fixed  attributes. 
Knowledge  of  the  soul  was  immediate  in  consciousness, 
and  adequate ;  at  least,  as  adequate  as  such  knowledge 
could  be  made.  The  mind  was  best  understood  where 
best  or  most  fully  manifested;  its  higher  'faculties,'  even 
when  not  in  operation,  were  still  there,  but  asleep. 

Under  such  a  conception,  the  man  was  father  to  the 
child.  What  the  adult  consciousness  discovers  in  itself 
is  true,  and  wherein  the  child  lacks  it  falls  short  of  the 
true  stature  of  soul  life.  We  must,  therefore,  if  we  take 
account  of  the  child-mind  at  all,  interpret  it  up  to  the  reve- 
lations of  the  man-mind.  If  the  adult  consciousness  shows 
the  presence  of  principles  not  observable  in  the  child  con- 
sciousness, we  must  suppose,  nevertheless,  that  they  are 
really  present  in  the  child  consciousness  beyond  the  reach 
of  our  observation.  The  old  argument  was  this, — and  it 
is  not  too  old  to  be  found  in  the  metaphysics  of  to-day,  — 
consciousness  reveals  certain  great  ideas  as  simple  and 
original :  consequently  they  must  be  so.  If  you  do  not 
find  them  in  the  child-mind,  then  you  must  read  them 
into  it. 

The  genetic  idea  reverses  all  this.  Instead  of  a  fixed 
substance,  we  have  the  conception  of  a  growing,  develop- 
ing activity.  Functional  psychology  succeeds  faculty  psy- 
chology.    Instead   of  beginning  with  the  most  elaborate 


Infant  PsycJiology  :   Ontoocncsis.  3 

exhibition  of  this  growth  and  development,  we  shall  find 
most  instruction  in  the  simplest  activity  that  is  at  the 
same  time  the  same  activity.  Development  is  a  process 
of  involution  as  well  as  of  evolution,  and  the  elements 
come  to  be  hidden  under  the  forms  of  complexity  which 
they  build  up.  Are  there  principles  in  the  adult  con- 
sciousness which  do  not  appear  in  the  child  consciousness, 
then  the  adult  consciousness  must,  if  possible,  be  inter- 
preted by  principles  present  in  the  child  consciousness ; 
and  when  this  is  not  possible,  the  conditions  under  which 
later  principles  take  their  rise  and  get  their  development 
must  still  be  adequately  explored. 

Now  that  this  genetic  conception  has  arrived,  it  is  aston- 
ishing that  it  did  not  arrive  sooner,  and  it  is  astonishing 
that  the  '  new '  psychology  has  hitherto  made  so  little  use 
of  it.  The  difference  between  description  and  explanation 
is  as  old  as  science  itself.  What  chemist  long  remains 
satisfied  with  a  description  of  the  substances  found  in 
nature }  He  is  no  investigator  at  all.  His  science  was 
not  born  until  he  became  an  analyst.  The  student  of  phi- 
lology is  not  content  with  a  description,  a  grammar,  of 
spoken  languages  :  he  desiderates  their  reduction  to  com- 
mon vocal  elements,  and  aims  to  discover  the  laws  of  their 
genetic  development.  But  the  mental  scientist  has  called 
such  description  science,  even  when  he  has  had  examples 
of  nature's  own  furnishing  around  him  which  would  have 
confirmed  or  denied  the  results  of  mental  analysis. 

The  advantages  which  we  look  to  infant  psychology  to 
furnish,  meet  just  this  need  of  analysis  ;  and  the  reason 
that  the  needed  analysis  is  found  here,  is  that  the.mind, 
like  all  other  natural  things,  grows.  This  general  state- 
ment may  be  put  into  concrete  form  under  several  points. 


4  Infant  and  Race  Psychology. 

which  divide  this  branch  of  general  psychology  from  others 
now  recognized. 

I.  In  the  first  place,  the  phenomena  of  the  infant  con- 
sciousness are  simple,  as  opposed  to  reflective;  that  is,  they 
are  the  child's  presentations  or  memories  simply,  not  his 
own  observations  of  them.  In  the  adult  consciousness  the 
disturbing  influences  of  inner  observation  is  a  matter  of 
notorious  moment.  It  is  impossible  for  me  to  know  ex- 
actly what  I  feel,  for  the  apprehending  of  it  through  the 
attention  alters  its  character.  My  volition  also  is  a  com- 
plex thing  of  alternatives,  one  of  which  is  my  personal 
pride  and  self-conscious  egotism.  But  the  child's  emotion 
is  as  spontaneous  as  a  spring.  The  effects  of  it  in  the 
mental  life  come  out  in  action,  pure  and  uninfluenced  by 
calculation  and  duplicity  and  adult  reserve.  There  is 
around  every  one  of  us  a  web  of  convention  and  prejudice 
of  our  own  making.  Not  only  do  we  reflect  the  social  for- 
malities of  our  environment,  and  thus  lose  the  distinguish- 
ing spontaneities  of  childhood,  but  each  one  of  us  builds 
up  his  own  little  world  of  seclusion  and  formality  with 
himself.  We  are  subject  not  only  to  'idols  of  the  forum,' 
but  also  to  'idols  of  the  den.' 

The  child,  on  the  contrary,  has  not  learned  his  own 
importance,  his  pedigree,  his  beauty,  his  social  place,  his 
religion,  his  paternal  disgrace  ;  and  he  has  not  observed 
himself  through  all  these  and  countless  other  lenses  of 
time,  place,  and  circumstance.  He  has  not  yet  turned 
himself  into  an  idol  nor  the  world  into  a  temple  ;  and  we 
can  study  him  apart  from  the  complex  accretions  which 
are  the  later  deposits  of  his  self-consciousness. 

Perhaps  one  of  the  best  illustrations  we  can  find  of  the 
value  of  this  consideration  in  the  study  of  the  child-mind 


Infa}it  Psychology :   0}itogenesis.  5 

is  seen  in  the  reversion  to  the  child-t3'pe  occasioned  by 
hypnotism.  One  of  the  signal  services  of  hypnotism,  I 
think,  is  the  demonstration  of  the  intrinsic  motor  force  of 
an  idea.  Any  idea  tends  at  once  to  realize  itself  in  action. 
All  conventionalities,  proprieties,  alternatives,  hesitations, 
are  swept  away,  and  the  developed  mind  reveals  its  skele- 
ton structure,  so  to  speak,  its  composition  from  reactive 
elements.  But  hypnotism  need  not  have  been  waited  for 
to  show  this.  The  patient  observation  of  the  movements 
of  a  child  during  his  first  year  would  have  put  it  -among  the 
safest  generalizations  of  the  science  of  mind.  In  the  ab- 
sence of  alternative  considerations,  reflections,  the  child 
acts,  and  act  it  must,  on  the  first  suggestion  whicji  has  the 
faintest  meaning  in  terms  of  its  sensations  of  movement.  ) 

2.  The  study  of  children  is  generally  the  only  means  of 
testing  the  truth  of  our  mental  analyses.  If  we  decide 
that  a  certain  complex  product  is  due  to  a  union  of  simpler 
mental  elements,  then  we  may  appeal  to  the  proper  period 
of  child-life  to  see  the  union  taking  place.  The  range  of 
growth  is  so  enormous  from  the  infant  to  the  adult,  and 
the  beginnings  of  the  child's  mental  life  are  so  low  in  the 
scale,  in  the  matter  of  instinctive  and  mental  endowment, 
that  there  is  hardly  a  question  of  analysis  now  under 
debate  which  may  not  be  tested  by  this  method. 

On  the  other  hand,  that  such  confirmation  shuts  out 
most  conclusively  the  advocates  of  irreducibility  in  many 
cases,  seems  to  admit  of  no  question.  A  good  example 
of  such  analysis  is  seen  in  the  distinction  between  simple 
consciousness  and  self-consciousness.  Over  and  over 
again  have  systems  been  built  upon  the  subject-object 
theory  of  consciousness  ;  namely,  that  personality,  sub- 
jectivity,   consciousness    in    any   form    necessarily   impli- 


6  Infant  and  Race  Psychology. 

cated  an  antithesis,  in  consciousness,  between  ego  and 
non-ego.  But  an  example  of  what  is  thus  denied  may  be 
seen  upon  the  floor  of  any  nursery  where  there  is  a  child 
less  than  six  months  of  age. 

At  this  point  it  is  that  child  psychology  is  more  valu- 
able than  the  study  of  the  consciousness  of  animals.  The 
latter  never  become  men,  while  children  do.  The  ani- 
mals represent  in  some  few  respects  a  branch  of  the  tree 
of  growth  in  advance  of  man,  while  being  in  many  other 
respects  very  far  behind  him.  In  studying  animals  we 
are  always  haunted  by  the  fear  that  the  analogy  may  not 
hold  ;  that  some  element  essential  to  the  development  of 
the  human  mind  m-ay  not  discover  itself  at  all.  Even  in 
such  a  question  as  the  localization  of  the  motor  functions 
of  the  brain,  where  the  analogy  is  one  of  comparative 
anatomy  and  only  secondarily  of  psychology,  the  monkey 
presents  analogies  with  man  which  dogs  do  not.  But  in 
the  study  of  children  we  may  be  always  sure  that  a  nor- 
mal child  has  in  him  the  promise  of  a  normal  man. 

The  contrast  between  this  branch  of  psychology  and 
mental  pathology  also  shows  points  of  advantage  on  the 
side  of  the  former.  In  the  study  of  mental  disease  all 
the  mental  functions  are  or  may  be  involved.  We  are 
never  sure  that  functional  connections  and  sympathies 
have  not  been  developed  in  the  growth  of  the  personality 
as  a  whole,  which  are  liable  to  derangement  with  other 
processes  very  remote  from  them.  For  example,  instinct 
is  modified  by  the  growth  of  volition  ;  so  that  in  cases  of 
diseased  volition,  we  do  not  find  that  the  instincts  corre- 
sponding to  those  of  the  creatures  which  do  not  attain 
volition  are  left  intact.  For  this  reason  the  application 
of   the  logical  '  method   of   difference/  which  consists  in 


Infant  Psychology :   Ontogenesis.  7 

observing  the  change  brought  about  in  a  phenomenon 
from  the  removal  of  part  of  its  antecedent  conditions, 
cannot  be  always  relied  upon.  It  is  further  true  that,  in 
the  child,  the  whole  nature  is  growing  together,  so  that 
the  absence  of  one  function  does  not  mean  the  violent 
uninhibited  exercise  of  others,  as  is  the  case  with  diseased 
adult  patients. 

One  of  the  same  difficulties  confronts  the  student  of 
animal  pathology.  The  indefinite  source  of  error  called 
'shock'  is  always  present.  The  organs  left  intact  by 
the  disease  or  by  the  operator,  '  sympathize '  in  the  suf- 
ferings of  the  organism  as  a  whole ;  and  sometimes  loss 
of  function  is  reported,  when  time  afterwards  repairs  the 
damasre. 

In  dealing  with  the  child,  however,  the  same  advantage 
of  simplicity  is  secured  without  the  corresponding  disad- 
vantage of  possible  interference  of  functions.  In  other 
words,  the  simplicity  of  the  child  is  normal  simplicity, 
while  the  simplicity  of  disease  or  surgery  is  abnormal  sim- 
plicity;  and  the  danger  of  what  physicians  call  'complica- 
tion '  is  in  the  former  case  entirely  ruled  out. 

3.  Again,  in  the  study  of  the  child-mind,  we  have  the 
added  advantage  of  a  corresponding  simplicity  on  the 
organic  side ;  that  is,  we  are  able  to  take  account  of 
the  physiological  processes  at  a  time  when  they  are  rela- 
tively simple.  I  say  'relatively  simple,'  for  in  reality 
they  are  enormously  complex  at  birth,  and  the  embryolo- 
gist  pushes  his  researches  much  farther  back  in  the  life- 
history  of  the  organism.  But  yet  they  are  simple  relatively 
to  their  condition  after  the  formation  of  habits,  motor 
complexes,  brain  connections  and  associations;  in  short, 
after  the  nervous  system  has  been  educated  to  its  whole 


8  Infant  and  Race  Psychology. 

duty  in  its  living  environment.  For  example  :  a  psychol- 
ogy which  holds  that  we  have  a  *  speech  faculty,*  an 
original  mental  endowment  which  is  incapable  of  further 
reduction,  may  appeal  to  the  latest  physiological  research 
and  find  organic  confirmation,  at  least  as  far  as  a  deter- 
mination of  its  cerebral  apparatus  is  concerned ;  but  such 
support  for  the  position  is  wanting  when  we  return  to  the 
brain  of  the  infant.  Not  only  do  we  fail  to  find  the  series 
of  centres  into  which  the  organic  basis  of  speech  has  been 
divided,  but  even  those  of  them  which  we  do  find  have 
not  taken  up  the  function,  either  alone  or  together,  which 
they  perform  when  speech  is  actually  realized.  In  other 
words,  the  primary  object  of  each  of  the  various  centres 
involved  is  not  speech,  but  some  other  and  simpler  func- 
tion ;  and  speech  arises  by  development  from  a  union  of 
these  separate  functions. 

We  accordingly  find  a  development  of  consciousness 
keeping  pace  with  the  development  of  the  physical  organ- 
ism. The  extent  of  possible  analogies  between  the  growth 
of  body  and  that  of  mind  may  thus  be  estimated  from 
below ;  and  any  outstanding  facts  of  the  inner  life  which 
cannot  be  correlated  with  facts  of  the  physical  organism 
get  greater  prominence  and  safer  estimation. 

4.  In  observing  young  children,  a  more  direct  applica- 
tion of  the  experimental  method  is  possible.^  By  '  experi- 
ment '  here,  I  mean  both  experiment  on  the  senses  and 
also  experiment  directly  on  consciousness  by  suggestion, 
social  influence,  etc.  In  experimenting  on  adults,  great 
difficulties  arise  through  the  fact  that  reactions  —  such  as 
performing  a  voluntary  movement  when  a  signal  is  heard, 

^  On  the  nature  and  application  of  experiment  in  psychology,  see  my  Hand- 
book of  Psychology,  I.,  2d  ed.,  pp.  25-31. 


Infant  Psychology :   Ontogenesis.  9 

etc., — are  broken  at  the  centre  by  deliberation,  habitual 
desire,  choice,  etc.,  and  closed  again  by  a  conscious  volun- 
tary act.  The  subject  hears  a  sound,  identifies  it,  and 
presses  a  button —  if  lie  cJioose  and  agree  to  do  so.  What 
goes  on  in  this  interval  between  the  advent  of  the  incoming 
nerve  process  and  the  discharge  of  the  outgoing  nerve  proc- 
ess ?  Something,  at  any  rate,  which  represents  a  brain 
process  of  great  complexity.  Now,  anything  that  fixes  this 
sensori-motor  connection  or  simplifies  the  central  process, 
in  so  far  gives  greater  certainty  to  the  results.  For  this 
reason,  experiments  on  reflex  reactions  are  valuable  and 
decisive  where  similar  experiments  on  voluntary  reactions 
are  uncertain  and  of  doubtful  value.  Now  the  fact  that 
the  child  consciousness  is  relatively  simple,  and  so  offers 
a  field  for  more  fruitful  experiment,  is  illustrated  in  what 
is  said  in  the  following  pages  about  suggestion  in  infant 
life ;  it  is  also  seen  in  the  mechanical  reactions  of  an 
infant  to  strong  stimuli,  such  as  bright  colors,  etc.^  Of 
course,  this  is  the  point  where  originality  must  be  exer- 
cised in  the  devising  and  executing  of  experiments.  After 
the  subject  is  a  little  better  developed,  new  experimentation 
will  be  as  difficult  here  as  in  the  other  sciences ;  but  at 
present  the  simplest  phenomena  of  child  life  and  activity 
are  open  to  the  investigator. 

With  this  inadequate  review  of  the  advantages  of  infant 
psychology,  it  is  well  also  to  point  out  the  dangers  of  the 
abuse  of  such  a  branch  of  inquiry.  Such  dangers  are  real. 
The  very  simplicity  which  seems  to  characterize  the  life 
of  the  child  is  often  extremely  misleading,  and  misleading 
because  the  simplicity  in  question  is  not  always  typical, 

1  See  below,  Chaps.  III.  to  VI. 


lo  Infant  and  Race  Psychology. 

but  may  be  to  a  degree  individual.  Mr.  Spencer  had  a 
large  range  of  facts  in  view  when  he  said  that  organic 
development  involved  progress  not  only  in  complexity,  but 
also  in  dcfiniteness  ;  and  the  distinction  between  simplic- 
ity which  indicates  mere  absence  of  complexity,  and  that 
which  indicates  dcfiniteness  of  function  as  well,  applies 
with  great  force  to  mental  growth.  Two  nervous  reactions 
may  appear  equally  simple;  but  one  maybe  an  adaptive 
reaction  learned  with  great  pains  and  really  very  complex 
in  its  elements,  while  the  other  may  be  inadaptive  and 
really  simple.  So  a  state  of  infant  consciousness  may 
seem  to  involve  no  complexity  or  integration,  and  yet 
turn  out  to  represent,  by  very  apparent  reason  of  its  sim- 
plicity and  dcfiniteness,  a  mass  of  individual  or  race  experi- 
ence. It  is  a  corollary  from  this  that  children  differ  under 
the  law  of  heredity  very  remarkably,  even  in  the  simplest 
manifestations  of  their  conscious  lives.  It  is  never  safe, 
except  under  the  qualifications  mentioned  below,  to  say, 
'This  child  did,  consequently  all  children  must.'  The  most 
we  can  usually  say  in  observing  single  infants  is,  'This 
child  did,  consequently  another  child  may.'  Yet  the 
uncertainties  of  the  case  may  be  summed  up  and  avoided 
if  certain  principles  of  mental  development  are  kept  in 
view. 

I.  In  the  first  place,  we  can  fix  no  absolute  time  in  the 
history  of  the  mind  at  which  a  certain  mental  function 
takes  its  rise.  The  observations,  now  quite  extensively 
recorded,  and  sometimes  quoted  as  showing  that  the  first 
year,  or  the  second  year,  etc.,  brings  such  and  such  devel- 
opments, tend,  on  the  contrary,  to  show  that  such  divisions 
do  not  hold  in  any  strict  sense.  Like  any  organic  growth, 
the  nervous  system  may  develop  faster  under  more  favour- 


hifajit  PsycJiology  :   Ojitogeiicsis,  1 1 

able  conditions,  or  more  slowly  under  less  favourable  ;  and 
the  growth  of  mental  faculty  is  largely  dependent  upon 
such  organic  growth.  Only  in  broad  outline  and  by  the 
widest  generalization  can  such  epochs  be  marked  off 
at  all. 

2.  The  possibility  of  the  occurrence  of  a  mental  phe- 
nomenon must  be  distinguished  from  its  necessity.  The 
occurrence  of  a  single  clearly  observed  event  is  decisive 
only  against  the  theory  according  to  which  its  occurrence 
under  the  given  conditions  may  not  occur;  that  is,  the 
cause  of  the  event  is  proved  not  to  lie  among  agencies 
or  conditions  which  are  absent.  For  example  :  the  very 
early  adaptive  movements  of  the  infant  in  receiving  its 
food  cannot  be  due  to  volition ;  but  the  case  is  still  open 
as  to  the  question  what  is  the  sufficient  reason  of  their 
presence,  i.e.,  how  much  nervous  development  is  present, 
how  much  experience  is  necessary,  etc.  It  is  well  to 
emphasize  the  fact  that  one  case  may  be  decisive  in  over- 
throwing a  theory,  but  the  conditions  are  seldom  simple 
enough  to  make  one  case  decisive  in  establishing  a  theory. 

3.  It  follows  from  the  principle  of  growth  itself  that  the 
order  of  development  of  the  mental  functions  is  constant, 
and  normally  free  from  variation  ;  consequently,  the  most 
fruitful  observations  of  children  are  those  which  show  that 
such  a  function  was  present  before  ajiother  could  be  ob- 
served. The  complexity  becomes  finally  so  remarkable 
that  there  seems  to  be  no  before  or  after  at  all  in  mental 
things  ;  but  if  the  child's  processes  show  stages  in  which  any 
element  is  clearly  absent,  we  have  at  once  light  upon  the 
law  of  growth.  For  example  :  if  a  single  case  is  conclu- 
sively established  of  a  child's  drawing  an  inference  before 
it  begins  to  use  words  or  significant  vocal  sounds,  the  one 


12  Infant  and  Race  Psychology. 

case  is  as  good  as  a  thousand  to  show  that  thought  de- 
velops to  a  degree  independently  of  spoken  language.^ 

4.  While  the  most  direct  results  are  acquired  by  syste- 
matic experiments  with  a  given  point  in  view,  still  general 
observations  kept  regularly,  and  carefully  recorded,  are 
important  for  the  interpretation  which  a  great  many  such 
records  may  afford  in  the  end.  In  the  multitude  of  expe- 
riences here,  as  everywhere,  there  is  strength.  Such  ob- 
servations should  cover  everything  about  the  child,  —  his 
movements,  cries,  impulses,  sleep,  dreams,  personal  pref- 
erences, muscular  efforts,  attempts  at  expression,  games, 
favourites,  etc., — and  should  be  recorded  in  a  regular  day- 
book at  the  time  of  occurrence.  What  is  important  and 
what  is  not,  is,  of  course,  something  to  be  learned ;  and  it 
is  extremely  desirable  that  any  one  contemplating  such 
observations  should  acquaint  himself  beforehand  with  the 
principles  of  general  psychology  and  physiology,  espe- 
cially the  former,  and  seek  also  the  practical  advice  of  a 
trained  observer.^ 

§  2.    Race  Psychology :  Phylogenesis. 

If  we  adopt  a  distinction  in  terminology  which  the  biol- 
ogists use,  and  call  the  development  of  a  single  life  or 
mind  its  ontogenesis,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  call  the  life 
history  of  the  race,  or  of  consciousness  in  all  the  forms  of 
animal  life,  the  pJiylogenesis  of  mind,  it  will  be  seen  that 
what  I  have  said  about  infant  psychology  falls  under  the 

^  Yet  even  this  rule  is  subject  to  the  modifications  given  below  in  this  chap- 
ter, §  4,  II. 

2  I  hope,  in  another  work,  devoted  to  '  Interpretations  '  of  some  of  the  prin- 
ciples which  this  book  discusses,  to  give  some  practical  directions  to  readers 
who  desire  to  observe  children  usefully;   see  also  Chap.  XII.,  §  3,  below. 


Infant  Psychology  :  Phylogenesis,  1 3 

former  head.  Before  we  proceed  to  take  up  the  special 
questions  to  which  this  book  is  devoted,  it  may  be  well  to 
indicate  the  place  of  phylogenetic  inquiry. 

The  phrase  'Race  Psychology'  is  commonly  used  in  a 
narrow  sense,  having  reference  to  the  characteristic  men- 
tal peculiarities  of  various  peoples,  tribes,  stages  of  civili- 
zation, cults,  etc.  That  is,  the  word  'race'  is  applied  to 
the  human  race.  The  points  of  comparison,  on  the  other 
hand,  between  human  and  animal  consciousness,  fall  under 
so-called  Comparative  Psychology.  I  take  the  liberty, 
however,  of  extending  the  meaning  of  the  former  phrase 
to  include  the  history  of  consciousness,  very  much  as  the 
phrase  'race  experience'  is  used  to  include  the  full  wealth 
of  inheritance  derived,  as  it  is  held  to  be,  from  ancestral 
life  of  whatever  kind.  The  problem  of  '  race  psychology ' 
then  becomes  the  problem  of  the  phylogenetic  develop- 
ment of  consciousness,  just  as  'individual  psychology' 
deals  with  its  ontogenetic  development,  both  being  legiti- 
mate branches  of  genetic  as  opposed  to  functional  psy- 
chology. 

The  question  of  race  psychology,  as  thus  understood, 
is  an  extremely  important  and,  until  very  lately,  a  greatly 
neglected  question.  The  presumption  in  favour  of  mental 
phylogenesis,  arising  from  the  modern  evolution  theory  in 
biology,  cannot  be  duly  weighed  without  the  most  careful 
and  detailed  comparative  work  and  the  fairest  interpreta- 
tion of  the  concomitance  existing  between  nervous  and 
mental  growth  everywhere.  As  far  as  theoretical  human 
psychology  has  to  do  with  questions  of  the  nature  of  mind, 
as  opposed  to  questions  of  function,  it  is,  I  hold,  largely 
independent  of  questions  of  origin  ;  but  in  as  far  as  data 
of  origin  must  be  included  in  the  answer  to  questions  of 


14  Infant  and  Race  Psychology. 

function,  just  so  far  do  they  come  to  throw  Hght  on  the 
deeper  problems  of  the  nature  of  the  mind  as  vvell.^ 

Assuming,  then,  that  there  is  a  phylogenetic  problem, 
—  that  is,  assuming  that  mind  has  had  a  natural  history 
in  the  animal  series, — we  are  at  liberty  to  use  what  we 
know  of  the  correspondence  between  nerve  process  and 
conscious  process,  in  man  and  the  higher  animals,  to  arrive 
at  hypotheses  for  its  solution  i^  to  expect  general  analogies 
to  hold  between  nervous  development  and  mental  develop- 
ment, one  of  which  is  the  deduction  of  race  history  epochs 
from  individual  history  epochs  through  the  repetition  of 
phylogenesis  in  ontogenesis,  called  in  biology  'Recapitu- 
lation'; to  view  the  plan  of  development  of  the  two  series 
of  facts  taken  together  as  a  common  one  in  race  history, 
as  we  are  convinced  it  is  in  individual  history  by  an  over- 
whelming weight  of  evidence  ;  to  accept  the  criteria  estab- 
lished by  biological  research  on  one  side  of  this  corre- 
spondence, —  the  organic,  —  while  we  expect  biology  to 
accept  the  criteria  established  on  the  other  side  by  psy- 
chology ;  and,  finally,  to  admit  with  equal  freedom  the 
possibility  of  an  absolute  beginning  of  either  series  at 
points,  if  such  be  found,  at  which  the  best  conceived 
criteria  on  either  side  fail  of  application.  For  example  :  if 
biology  has  the  right  to  make  it  a  legitimate  problem 
whether  the  organic  exhibits  a  kind  of  function  over  and 

^  For  further  remarks  on  '  Origin  vs.  Nature,'  see  the  Preface. 

2  Such  a  hypothesis  is  that  of  a  'uniform  psycho-physical  connection' 
which  is  commonly  held  to  apply  in  two  great  spheres  in  which  it  has  not 
as  yet  been  proved,  viz.,  the  sphere  of  volition  (see,  however.  Chapter  XIV. 
below)  on  the  one  hand,  and  that  of  the  lower  nervous  centres  on  the  other. 
The  two  questions  which  uniformity  supposes  answered  in  the  affirmative  are 
accordingly:  has  volition  a  nervous  process?  and,  do  the  lower  nervous 
ganglia  have  consciousness? 


Analogies  of  Development.  15 

above  that  supplied  by  the  chemical  affinities  which  are 
the  necessary  presuppositions  of  life,  then  the  psychologist 
has  the  equal  right,  after  the  same  candid  rehearsal  of  the 
facts  in  support  of  his  criteria,  to  submit  for  examination 
the  claim,  let  us  say,  that  'judgments  of  worth'  represent 
a  kind  of  deliverance  which  vital  functions  as  such  do  not 
give  rise  to. 

The  chapters  of  this  book  will  be  found,  in  various 
places,  to  involve  all  these  determinations  respecting  ge- 
netic psychology.  One  of  them,  however,  —  that  which 
relates  to  the  analogy  between  individual  and  race  growth, 
—  carries  so  many  preliminary  suggestions  and  yet  has 
received  so  little  enforcement  in  the  literature  of  the 
topic,  that  it  is  well  to  present  it  at  the  outset  with  greater 
fulness. 

§  3.    Analogies  of  Development. 

Students  of  biology  consider  the  argument  for  organic 
evolution  especially  strong  in  view  of  the  analogy  between 
race  and  individual  development.  The  individual  in  em- 
bryo passes  through  stages  which  represent  morphologi- 
cally, to  a  degree,  the  stages  actually  found  in  the  ancestral 
animal  series.^  A  similar  analogy,  when  inquired  into  on 
the  side  of  consciousness,  seems  on  the  surface  true,  since 
we  find  more  and  more  developed  stages  of  conscious  func- 
tion in  a  series  corresponding  in  the  main  with  the  stages 
of  nervous  growth  in  the  animals  ;  and  then  we  find  this 
growth  paralleled  in  its  great  features  in  the  mental  devel- 
opment of  the  human  infant. 

1  A  recent  popular  statement  of  the  facts  in  the  case  of  the  embryos  of  the 
frog  and  man  is  given  by  Kingsley  in  the  article  '  Evolution,'  in  Johnson''s 
Universal  Cyclopcedia  (new  edition,  1894). 


1 6  Infant  and  Race  Psychology. 

The  race  series  seems  to  require,  both  on  organic 
grounds  and  from  evidence  regarding  consciousness,  a  de- 
velopment whose  major  terms  are  somewhat  in  this  order,^ 
i.e.,  simple  contractility  with  the  organic  analogue  of  pleas- 
ure and  pain  ;  nervous  integration  corresponding  to  special 
sense  functions,  including  the  congeries  of  muscular  sen- 
sations, and  some  adaptive  movements  ;  nervous  integra- 
tion to  a  degree  to  which  corresponds  mental  presentation 
of  objects  with  higher  motor  organization  and  reflex  atten- 
tion ;  greater  co-ordination,  having  on  the  conscious  side 
memory,  conscious  imitation,  impulse,  instinct,  instinctive 
emotion  ;  finally,  cerebral  function  with  conscious  thought, 
voluntary  action,  and  ideal  emotion.  Without  insisting  on 
the  details  of  this  sketch  —  intended  at  this  point  for  no 
more  than  a  sketch  —  certain  great  epochs  of  functional 
differentiation  may  be  clearly  seen.  First,  the  epoch  of 
the  rudimentary  sense  processes,  the  pleasure  and  pain 
process,  and  simple  motor  adaptation,  called  for  conven- 
ience the  '  affective  epoch '  :  second,  the  epoch  of  pre- 
sentation, memory,  imitation,  defensive  action,  instinct, 
which  passes  by  gradations  into,  third,  the  epoch  of 
complex  presentation,  complex  motor  co-ordination,  of 
conquest,  of  offensive  action,  and  rudimentary  volition. 
These,  the  second  and  third  together,  I  should  charac- 
terize, on  the  side  of  consciousness,  as  the  '  epoch  of 
objective  reference':  and,  finally,  the  epoch  of  thought, 
reflection,  self-assertion,  social  organization,  union  of 
forces,  co-operation;  the  'epoch  of  subjective  reference,' 
which,  in  human  history,  merges  into  the  'social  and 
ethical  epoch.' 

In  the  animal  world  these  terms  form  a  series  —  evident 

^  Some  of  these  points  have  discussion  in  later  chapters. 


Analogies  of  Development.  i  7 

enough  on  the  surface  —  its  terms  not  sharply  divided 
from  one  another,  not  in  most  instances  exclusive  before 
and  after ;  but  representing  great  places  for  emphasis, 
stages  of  safe  acquirement,  and  outlooks  for  further 
growth.  So  we  find  the  invertebrates,  the  lower  verte- 
brates, the  higher  vertebrates  up  to,  or  somewhere  near, 
man,  and  man — four  stages. 

The  analogy  of  this  series,  again,  with  that  of  the 
infant's  growth,  is,  in  the  main,  very  clear :  the  child 
begins  in  its  prenatal  and  early  post-natal  experience  with 
blank  sensations  and  pleasure  and  pa4n  with  the  motor 
adaptations  to  which  they  lead,  passes  into  a  stage  of 
apprehension  of  objects  with  response  to  them  by  'sug- 
gestion,' imitation,  etc.,  gets  to  be  more  or  less  self-con- 
trolled, imaginative,  and  volitional,  and  ultimately  becomes 
reflective,  social,  and  ethical. 

On  the  side  of  consciousness,  however,  we  are  able 
safely  to  divide  our  functional  epochs  a  little  more  mi- 
nutely, and  in  those  of  the  following  chapters  in  which 
ontogenetic  development  is  our  main  point  of  inquiry, 
this  is  done. 

A  single  further  distinction  is  in  point  here,  however ;  a 
distinction  also  further  justified  in  a  subsequent  connec- 
tion.^  It  is  evident  that  if  the  objective  epoch  precedes 
the  subjective  —  if  the  child  gets  objects  and  reacts  upon 
them  without  reflection,  first,  and  only  later  deliberates 
upon  their  meaning  to  himself,  and  then  aims  at  his  own 
pleasure  or  profit  in  his  behaviour  toward  them — it  is 
evident  that  there  will  be  a  great  difference  between  the 
way  he  looks  at  other  persons  at  these  two  stages  of  his 

1  Below,  Chap.  VI.,  §3,  and  Chap.  XI.,  §  3;  also  the  volume  of  'Inter- 
pretations' which  is  to  follow  this  work  {in  loc). 

C 


1 8  Infant  and  Race  Psychology. 

growth  respectively.  Before  he  understands  himself,  that 
is,  during  the  objective  epoch,  he  cannot  understand  others, 
except  as  they  are  also  objects  of  a  certain  kind  ;  but  in 
learning  to  understand  himself,  he  also  comes  to  understand 
them,  as  like  himself,  that  is,  as  themselves  having  objects 
to  act  toward  and  upon  just  as  he  does.  Here  are,  there- 
fore, four  very  distinct  phases  of  the  child's  experience  of 
persons  not  himself,  all  subsequent  to  his  purely  affective 
or  pleasure-pain  epoch ;  first,  persons  are  simply  objects, 
parts  of  the  material  going  on  to  be  presented,  mainly 
sensations  which  stand  out  strong,  etc.  ;  second,  persons 
are  very  peculiar  objects,  very  interesting,  very  active,  very 
arbitrary,  very  portentous  of  pleasure  or  pain.  If  we  con- 
sider these  objects  as  fully  presented,  i.e.,  as  in  due  rela- 
tionship to  one  another  in  space,  projected  out,  and  thought 
of  as  external,  and  call  such  objects  again  projects,  then 
persons  at  this  stage  may  be  cdW^d  persojial projects.  They 
have  certain  peculiarities  afterwards  found  by  the  child  to 
be  the  attributes  of  personality  ;  third,  his  own  actions 
issuing  from  himself,  largely  by  imitation,  as  we  shall  see, 
in  response  to  the  requirements  of  this  'projective'  en- 
vironment, having  his  own  organism  as  their  centre  and 
his  own  consciousness  as  their  theatre,  give  him  light 
on  himself  as  subject;  and,  fourth,  this  light  upon  himself 
is  reflected  upon  other  persons  to  illuminate  them  as  also 
subjects,  and  they  to  him  then  become  ejects  or  social 
fellows. 

I  insist  upon  this  series  of  distinctions  here,  even  though 
it  be  necessary  to  refer  the  reader  ahead  in  my  text  for 
further  justification  of  them  ;  since  it  is  the  fundamental 
disregard  of  them  which  has  vitiated  most  of  the  earlier 
work  in  infant  and  social  psychology.     The  familiar  *  psy- 


Analogies  of  Develop77ient,  19 

chologist's  fallacy,'  a  fallacy  which  is  so  easy  a  refuge  for 
inadequate  insight,  and  so  ready  a  screen  for  faulty  analy- 
sis, will  be  permanently  exposed  only  by  the  adoption  of 
terms  which  forbid  appeal  to  it.  If  by  '  project  '  of  per- 
sons we  understand  the  infant's  consciousness  of  others 
before  he  is  conscious  of  himself,  by  *  subject '  his  con- 
sciousness of  himself,  and  by  'eject,'  as  Clifford  sug- 
gested, his  consciousness  of  other  persons  as  similar  to 
himself,  we  have,  I  think,  safer  terms  than  before  and,  at 
the  same  time,  full  opportunity  to  define  the  content  of 
each  as  the  facts  may  require. 

The  parallelism  with  animal  development  is  quite  clear 
from  this  new  point  of  approach.  The  only  stage  for 
which  an  evident  analogy  has  not  been  pointed  out  by 
other  writers  is  that  called  'projective.'  Now  in  the  fact 
of  herding,  common  life  and  arrangements  for  the  protec- 
tion of  the  herd,  animal  societies  of  various  kinds,  animal 
division  of  labour,  etc.,  —  whatever  be  the  origin  of  it, — 
we  have  what  seems  to  be  such  an  epoch  in  animal  life. 
These  creatures  show  a  real  recognition  of  one  individual 
by  another,  and  a  real  community  of  life  and  reaction, 
which  is  quite  different  from  the  individualism  of  a  purely 
sensational  and  unsocial  consciousness.  And  yet  it  is 
just  as  different  from  the  reflective  organization  of  human 
society,  in  which  the  self-consciousness  and  personal  voli- 
tion of  the  individual  play  the  most  important  role.^  I 
see  no  way  of  accounting  for  the  gregarious  instinct 
anywhere,  except  on  the  assumption  of  such  an  epoch  of 
animal  consciousness. 

We  thus  reach  what  I  think  is  a  valuable  distinction  in 

1  The  '  social '  life  of  certain  of  the  hymenoptera,  notably  bees  and  ants, 
illustrates  an  extreme  *  projective '  social  development  embodied  in  instinct. 


20  Iiifaiit  and  Race  Psychology. 

the  interpretation  of  animal  action,  and  avoid  what  has 
been  a  repetition  of  the  '  psychologist's  fallacy  '  habitual 
with  naturalists.  It  is  just  as  great  a  mistake  to  account 
for  human  society  in  terms  of  the  gregarious  instinct  of 
wolves,  while  yet  not  accounting  for  this  instinct,  as  it  is  to 
explain  human  reflective  altruism  by  the  organic  sympathy 
of  the  lioness  with  her  cub.  In  each  of  these  cases  we 
are  anticipating  a  later  stage  of  a  single  process  of  growth, 
because,  being  at  this  later  stage  ourselves,  we  are  able  to 
anticipate  it ;  and  by  thus  levelling  the  higher  down  to  the 
lower,  we  are  failing  to  recognize  the  essential  process  by 
which,  and  by  which  alone,  all  through  the  whole  organic 
evolution,  higher  functional  forms  are  reached  by  develop- 
ment from  lower. 

§  4.     Variations  i7i  Ontogeny. 

Even  in  the  great  darkness  which  obscures  the  relation 
of  race  to  individual  development,  two  modifications  seem 
plainly  necessary  of  the  common  biological  theory  of  Re- 
capitulation, according  to  which  there  is  a  strict  parallel 
between  them.^ 

I.  The  continued  application  of  the  principles  of  organic 
Habit  and  Accommodation,  with  the  perpetuation  of  their 
results  either  by  natural  selection  alone  or  with  the  in- 
heritance of  characters  acquired  by  individual  creatures, 
leads  to  certain  organic  'short-cuts' — the  omission  in  fu- 

1  See  also  Chap.  XVI.,  §  4,  below.  Perhaps  the  best  and  most  readable 
statement  of  the  present  standing  of  the  theory  of  *  Recapitulation '  is  the  late 
Prof.  A.  M.  Marshall's  President's  Address  before  the  British .  Association  at 
Leeds  in  1890,  reprinted  as  Chap.  XIII.,  'The  Recapitulation  Theory,'  in 
Ma.Tsh2i\Vs  £io/ogtcat  Lectures  amt  Actresses  (iSg4.).  The  names  associated 
with  the  theory  are  Ernst  von  Baer,  Louis  Agassiz,  Fritz  MUUer,  Haeckel,  and 
Balfour. 


VatHations  in    Ontogeny. 


21 


ture  descendants  of  certain  elements  or  stages  which  were 
necessary  in  the  progress  of  their  ancestors. 

Let  us  look  first  at  Habit,  and  put  the  case,  at  the  out- 
set, abstractly.  A  particular  function  involving  elements 
a,  b,  c,  etc.,  in  a  dog,  for  example,  may,  by  the  habitual 
exercise  of  this  function,  in  later  modes  of  life  and  differ- 
ent environment,  come  to  involve  only  the  elements  a,  c, 
etc.  This  is  actually  seen  in  well-known  examples,  such 
as  the  difference  between  dogs,  together  with  rabbits  and 
lower  creatures  generally,  on  one  side,  and  monkeys  and 
men  on  the  other  side,  in  regard  to  certain  sense  func- 
tions. If  the  cortical  centre  for  sight  be  extirpated  in  a 
dog,  he  becomes  temporarily  blind,  recovering  his  sight 
after  some  days  by  what  is  supposed  to  be  the  reinstate- 
ment of  a  lower  centre  in  the  function  which  belonged  to 
it  in  ancestral  forms  ;  this  lower  centre  is  the  b  of  the 
Uy  b,  c,  series.  But  when  monkeys  or  men  lose  their 
sight  by  reason  of  a  lesion  of  the  cortical  centre  for  vision 
in  the  occipital  lobe,  they  never  recover  it.  In  this  case 
the  lower  centre  has  lost  its  ability  to  constitute  itself  a  sight 
centre,  —  it  is  no  longer  necessary  as  a  term  in  the  series  of 
organs  involved  in  the  function,  —  and  a,  c,  etc.,  represents 
the  series.  This  'short-cut '  is  inherited  or  selected  and  so 
represents  a  departure  from  phylogeny.  As  I  have  said 
elsewhere  :  "  In  organisms  in  which  the  reflex  reactions 
predominate,  in  which  the  '  downward  '  growth  has  led  to 
the  consolidation  of  the  greater  part  of  the  system  in 
ganglionic  centres,  we  would  expect  that  the  higher  func- 
tions, the  centres  for  complex  delicate  movements,  would 
be  more  dependent  and  unformed.  Consequently,  when 
they  are  interfered  with,  the  ganglionic  centres,  being  still 
in  close  anatomical  connection  with   them,  would  regain 


2  2  Infant  and  Race  Psychology. 

the  function  whicli  they  formerly  performed.  Thus  sensori- 
motor ganglionic  connections  which  have  fallen  into  disuse 
through  the  growth  of  higher  centres  recover  their  lost 
activity  under  the  stimulus  of  a  serious  and  dangerous 
lesion.  It  is  nothing  more  than  a  reversion  of  function 
by  a  reverse  process  of  adaptation.  On  the  other  hand, 
in  the  case  of  man,  the  law  of  '  upward '  growth  has 
reached  its  fullest  application  ;  the  cortical  centres  have 
become  independent  of  their  ganglionic  cojifrhrs,  and,  in 
the  loss  of  the  former  an  irreparable  damage  is  sustained. 
In  this  latter  case,  it  is  a  general  in  the  army  who  has 
fallen,  and  no  subordinate  officer  can  fill  his  place ;  in  the 
former  case,  it  is  a  captain  that  is  lost  and  his  lieutenant  is 
easily  promoted."  ^ 

Referring  to  this  hypothesis  which  I  have  called  the 
'  short-cut  '  theory,  in  its  application  to  muscular  move- 
ment, the  application  which  has  especial  interest  for  us 
later  on,  Foster  says:^  '*  It  is  possible  to  maintain  the 
thesis  that  man  has  become  so  developed  as  to  his 
nervous  system  and  the  motor  cortex,  so  accustomed  to 
make  use  exclusively  of  the  pyramidal  system,  that  the 
will  has  lost  the  power,  still  possessed  by  the  lower 
animals,  to  gain  access  by  some  path  other  than  the 
pyramidal  one,  to  the  immediate  nervous  mechanisms  of 
thought." 

The  practical  result,  in  the  case  of  this  particular 
illustration,  which  recurs  to  us  in  a  later  discussion,^  may 
be  put  very  briefly  thus  :  it  is  possible  that  ajiimals  may 
perform  move7nents  which  seem  to  be  voluntary,  with  a  ner- 

1  Handbook  of  Psychology,  Vol.  II.,  p.  46. 

2  Textbook  of  Physiology,  5th  ed.,  III.,  p.  1062. 

3  Below,  Chap.  XIII. 


Variations  in   Ontogeny.  23 

vous  apparatus  wJiicJi  would  be  inadequate  to  their  volun- 
tary pe7'fornia7icc  by  the  cJiild  or  the  man}  And  this  is  to 
say  that  man  in  his  individual  development  does  not  pass 
through  the  stage  represented  by  the  animal's  performance 
of  this  function  with  this  apparatus. 

In  the  fact  of  Accommodation  or  adaptation,  we  find  a 
similar  influence  at  work  to  modify  the  strict  parallel  re- 
quired by  the  theory  of  Recapitulation.  By  accommoda- 
tion, with  the  new  adaptations  which  it  works,  old  habits 
are  broken  up,  and  new  co-ordinations  are  made,  which  are 
more  complex,  or  new  organic  growths  secured,  which  sim- 
plify a  function.  These  gains  are  again  clenched  by  he- 
redity or  selection  and  constitute  further  variations  from 
phylogeny.  This  is  particularly  evident  in  volition.  Fos- 
ter again  notes  this  in  the  quotation  which  follows,  citing 
the  same  structure  as  in  the  earlier  quotation,  the  pyra- 
midal tracts.  He  does  not  appear  to  see  the  appHcation  of 
the  two  opposite  principles  which  I  have  mentioned,  how- 
ever ;  for  he  does  not  make  it  clear  that  in  one  case,  the 
latter,  he  is  dealing  with  the  question  of  the  origin  of  the 
pyramidal  tracts  by  new  adaptations,  and  in  the  other, 
with  the  fixing  by  habit  of  these  tracts  for  purposes  of 
voluntary  movement.  He  says:^  ''When  we  pass  in 
review  a  series  of  brains  from  the  lower  to  the  higher,  and 
see  how  the  pyramidal  system  is,  so  to  speak,  grafted  onto 
the  rest  of  the  brain,  when  we  observe  how  the  increas- 
ing differentiation  of  the  motor  cortex  runs  parallel  to  the 
increasing  possession  of  skilled,  educated  movements,  we 
may  perhaps  suppose  that  'a  short-cut '  from  the  cortex  to 

1  I  have,  in  reference  to  this  formulation,  the  opinion  of  Prof.  H.  F.  Osborn, 
that  '  this  is  probably  supported  by  the  comparative  anatomy  of  the  cortex.' 

2  Loc.  ciL,  p.  1063. 


24  Infant  and  Race  Psychology. 

the  origins  of  the  several  motor  nerves,  such  as  is  afforded 
by  the  pyramidal  fibres,  from  the  advantages  it  offers  to 
the  more  primitive  path  from  segment  to  segment  along 
the  cerebro-spinal  axis,  has  by  natural  selection  been  de- 
veloped into  being  in  man  the  chief  and  most  important 
instrument  for  carrying  out  voluntary  movements." 

This  influence  of  Accommodation  means,  therefore,  in 
this  particular  case,  that  aiiimals  may  have  ne7'-uotis  appa- 
ratus strikingly  similar  to  that  of  man  in  many  of  its  parts 
and  still  not  be  able  to  perform  the  functions  which  are 
performed  by  those  parts  in  7nan.  And  the  reason  of  it  is, 
again,  that  man  has  got  a  certain  apparatus  set  aside  for  a 
higher  function  without  first  using  it  for  the  lower  func- 
tion for  which  the  animal  used  it.  In  this  again,  we  must 
recognize  a  violation  of  the  principle  of  Recapitulation. 

The  degree  to  which  a  simple  structural  device  may 
preserve  its  type  of  action  while  adapting  itself  to  new 
conditions,  and  assuming  functions  which,  as  far  as  their 
value,  end,  and  conscious  character  are  concerned,  are  new 
—  this  is  simply  extraordinary.  And  all  the  more  so 
when  we  go  to  consciousness  for  the  criterion  of  differ- 
ence in  function.  I  shall  illustrate  this  further  in  what 
I  call  the  principle  of  'lapsed  links '  in  the  discussion  of 
imitation  below,  and  also  in  connection  with  the  theory  of 
the  genesis  of  emotional  expression. ^  The  self-repeating 
or  circular  type  of  reaction,  to  which  the  name  imitation  is 
given  in  the  later  pages,  is  seen  to  be  fundamental  and  to 
remain  the  same,  as  far  as  structure  is  concerned,  for  all 
motor  activity  whatever:  the  only  difference  between 
higher  and  lower  function  being,  that  in  the  higher,  cer- 
tain   accumulated   adaptations    have   in  time  so  come  to 

1  Chap.  X.,  §  2  for  the  first  reference  and  Chap.  VIII.,  §  4  for  the  second. 


I 


Variations  in   Ontogeny.  25 

overlie  the  original  reaction,  that  the  conscious  state  which 
accompanies  it  seems  to  differ /^r  jr  from  the  crude  imita- 
tive consciousness  in  which  it  had  its  beginning. 

These  positions,  it  is  clear,  suggest  modifications  of  that 
doctrine  of  ontogenesis  which  holds  that  it  closely  epito- 
mizes phylogenesis.  It  is  evident  that  while  the  organism 
develops  serially  in  regular  stages,  yet  often  the  stages  in 
the  individual's  growth  represent  directly  later  stages  in 
the  series  of  animal  structures,  without  having  passed 
through  all  the  earlier  stages.  To  use  the  same  example, 
which  is  apropos  to  our  later  topics,  we  could  not  hold 
that  the  infant  first  gets  voluntary  movement  by  using  the 
intra-segmental  pathways,  and  then  later,  by  developing 
the  pyramidal  tracts  and  their  connections,  transfers  its 
voluntary  function  to  these.  Yet  this  latter  has  been,  prob- 
ably, the  course  of  phylogenesis.  On  the  contrary,  we  find 
that  the  infant  does  not  act  voluntarily  at  all  until  he  acts 
via  the  pyramidal  tracts  and  their  central  connections. 
The  stage  of  intra-segmental  voluntary  action  which,  if  it 
exists,  represents  phylogenetically  a  necessary  stage  of  de- 
velopment, is  lacking  altogether  in  the  ontogenetic  series.^ 

Similarly,  we  find  a  remarkable  illustration  on  the  side 
of  Accommodation.  On  the  strict  interpretation  of  the 
doctrine  of  Recapitulation  we  should  find  the  child  first 
passing  through  a  stage  of  very  varied  and  admirable  in- 
stinctive adjustments,  —  corresponding  to  the  instinctive 
equipment  of  the  brutes,  —  and  then  later  losing  these 
instincts  when  it  learns  to  act  voluntarily.  But  the  child 
shows  nothing  of  the  kind.  We  find  instead  that  he  passes 
directly  from  the  suggestive,  sensori-motor,  stage,  which  is 

1  Cf.  Edinger's  account  of  the  foetal  and  early  development  of  the  pyramidal 
tracts  in  his  Structure  of  the   Central  Nervous  System. 


26  Infant  a7id  Race  Psychology. 

much  lower  and  earlier  in  the  phylogenetic  series  than  the 
extreme  instinctive  stage,  directly  to  the  volitional  stage. 
He  accomplishes  this  by  direct  inheritance  of  the  highly 
differentiated  organism  which  has  arisen  through  the  exer- 
cise of  conscious  mental  selection  with  heredity  or  through 
natural  selection,  and  so  omits,  in  his  individual  develop- 
ment, a  great  mass  of  phylogenetic  details. 

The  probability  of  such  a  modification  of  the  doctrine 
of  ontogenesis  occurs  to  us  also  in  a  later  connection  as 
a  corollary  from  the  psychological  theory  of  Habit. ^  The 
question  is  raised  whether  the  effects  of  habit,  itself  a 
phenomenon  of  development,  would  not  be  inherited,  or 
selected,  thus  abbreviating  the  ontogenetic  process.  A 
child,  for  example,  by  inheriting  a  direct  tendency  to  re- 
spond to  a  visual  stimulus  with  movements  of  the  tongue 
and  larynx,  would  be  saved  the  long  course  of  development 
which  has  been  necessary  phylogenetically  for  the  estab- 
lishing of  the  direct  connection,  now  very  generally  held 
to  exist,  between  the  visual  and  motor-speech  centres,  with 
a  corresponding  saving  on  the  mental  side.  A  striking 
illustration  is  seen,  also,  in  the  infant's  behaviour  in  regard 
to  space.  A  strict  reproduction  of  the  phylogenetic  order 
would  require  that  the  child  should  first  see  the  spacial 
dimensions  with  all  the  exactitude  of  the  young  of  the 
lower  mammals,  and  then  afterwards  develop  the  appara- 
tus for  learning  space  properties  by  a  very  gradual  expe- 
rience, at  the  same  time  losing  the  former  apparatus  and 
with  it  his  instinctive  knowledge  of  space.^ 

1  Below,  Chap.  XVI.,  §§  2,  3. 

2  It  will  have  been  noticed  that  in  using  the  phrase  *  heredity,  or  natural 
selection,'  I  offer  either  of  the  current  biological  views  of  heredity.  I  do 
not  think  the  current  controversy  over  *  acquired  characters '  is  pertinent  to 
this  topic :    for  Wcismann's   supplementary  hypotheses   in   support   of  neo- 


Variations  in    Ontogeny.  27 

These  considerations  also  seem,  from  the  psychological 
side,  to  support  the  general  theory  of  'race  experience' 
as  held  by  the  evolutionists  of  both  schools.  The  whole 
tendency  of  current  psychology  is  toward  a  functional 
view  of  experience,  i.e.,  toward  the  view  that  memory  is 
a  form  of  mental  reinstatement  or  habit,  that  character  is 
disposition  for  action,  that  the  brain  develops  by  enlarge- 
ment of  function  on  the  basis  of  earlier  function,  and  that 
the  mind  proceeds  upon  its  past,  even  when  it  does  not 
know  its  indebtedness.  The  value  of  ancestral  experience 
is  seen  in  what  it  makes  me  to  be  for  opinion  and  action 
now  —  by  whatever  process  it  may  have  come  down  from 
my  father  to  myself. 

Now  this  is  what  evolution  claims  for  race-experience. 
It  says  what  is  present  in  the  mind  now,  in  the  way  of 
function,  is  due  somehow  to  the  past.  Nervous  inherit- 
ance provides  for  the  apparatus,  and  mental  inheritance 
sums  up  the  experience.  Hence  if  individual  mental  de- 
velopment does  not  epitomize  race  development  and  yet 
it  be  true  that  man  has  developed,  then  the  '  race  experi- 
ence hypothesis '  becomes  absolutely  essential  to  genetic 
psychology,  just  as  animal  physiology  would  be  the  main 
resource  of  human  morphology,  if  the  animal  embryos  did 
not  show  Recapitulation.^ 

Darwinism  are  so  evidently  framed  to  reinstate  all  the  explanations  of  the 
doctrine  of  use  with  heredity,  that  it  makes  little  difference  which  side  is  right. 
If  the  effects  of  experience  are  preserved  sufficiently  to  secure  development,  as 
we  find  it,  it  becomes  an  extremely  interesting  biological  problem  to  be  sure, 
but  not  a  matter  of  much  philosophical  importance,  which  does  it,  the  *  Sar- 
colemma '  or  the  '  Germ-plasm ' ;  nor  whether  the  method  is  used  with  heredity 
or  variation  with  selection.  See  further  discussion  of  the  bearing  of  the  two 
views  upon  the  theory  of  organic  development  below,  Chap.  VII.,  §  3. 

1  An  interesting  line  of  inquiry  has  recently  been  opened  up  into  what  is 
known  as  «  Neuroses  of  Development '  (cf.  Clouston's  book  with  that  title),  i.e., 


28  Infant  and  Race  Psychology. 

The  probabilities  point,  therefore,  from  the  side  of  the 
phylogenesis  of  mind  to  the  very  marked  modifications  of 
the  race  record  in  the  growth  of  the  individual.  They 
may  finally  have  to  be  stated  even  more  strongly  than  the 
purely  nervous  ones  are  stated,  e.g.,  by  Balfour,  who  says  : 
''The  time  and  sequence  of  the  development  of  parts  is 
often  modified,  and  finally  secondary  structural  features 
make  their  appearance  to  fit  the  embryo  or  larva  for  spe- 
cial conditions  of  existence.  .  .  .  Like  the  scholar  with 
his  manuscript,  the  embryologist  has  by  a  process  of  care- 
ful and  critical  examination  to  determine  where  the  gaps 
are  present,  to  detect  the  later  insertions,  and  to  place  in 
order  what  has  been  misplaced";^  and  by  Marshall:  "It 
is  indeed  a  history,  but  a  history  of  which  entire  chapters 
are  lost,  while  in  those  that  remain  many  pages  are  mis- 
placed and  others  are  so  blurred  as  to  be  illegible  .  .  . 
and  worse  still,  alterations  or  spurious  additions  have 
been  freely  introduced  by  later  hands,  and  at  times  so 
cunningly  as  to  defy  detection." 

II.  The  second  great  consideration  pertains  to  the 
period  of  infancy,  using  the  term  '  infancy '  to  cover  the 
entire  period  of  an  organism's  life  from  germination  to 
independent  existence  with  power  to  support  life  alone. 

The  bearing  of  the  length  of  the  extra-uterine  period 
of  infancy — the  usual  meaning  of  the  term  —  upon  the 
development  of  the  creature  has  been  shown  by  Fiske 
and  others  to  be  highly  important.  Children  are,  during 
their  long  infancy,  given  parental  care  and  artificial  protec- 

the  nervous  conditions  which  arise  from  the  fact  of  development  itself.  These 
states  arise  at  the  crises,  bridges,  *  short-cuts,'  in  the  individual's  development ; 
such  as  the  preliminaries  of  puberty,  which  probably  represent  a  great  series 
of  phylogenetic  changes. 

1  Comparative  E77ibryology,  p.  3. 


Variations  in   Ontogeny.  29 

tion,  and  so  enabled  to  develop  slowly  to  maturity,  with  all 
the  practice  in  the  acquisition  of  movements  and  in  general 
adaptation  to  artificial  conditions  of  living,  etc.,  which  the 
human  intellectual  and  social  environment  of  the  adult 
demands.  A  long  infancy  period  is  accordingly  necessary 
to  his  being  a  man  ;  the  child  must  have  time,  nourishment 
and  protection  during  the  time,  and  finally  instruction. 

Biologists  are  now  recognizing  a  corresponding  group 
of  modifying  circumstances  brought  to  bear  also  during  the 
prenatal  period,  which  is  simply  an  earlier  stage  of  infancy. 
The  course  of  development  of  the  embryo  is  dependent 
upon  the  presence  and  amount  of  food,  called  'food-yolk,' 
which  the  ^gg  supplies.  A  principle  has  been  formulated 
which  connects  the  ontogenetic  stages  of  growth  directly 
with  the  food-yolk  supply,  i.e.,  a  plentiful  supply  of  food- 
yolk  tends  to  a  direct  development  toward  maturity,  to 
the  abbreviation,  consequently,  of  the  recapitulation  proc- 
ess, and  to  the  birth  of  the  creature  ready  formed  for 
separate  and  independent  existence. ^ 

In  this  matter  of  the  interpretation  of  the  whole  infancy 
period,  including  both  prenatal  and  postnatal  infancy,  how- 
ever, there  seem  to  be  two  influences  at  work  which  tend 
to  opposite  results.  We  have  seen  that  abundant  food 
supply  in  the  conditions  of  embryonic  or  prenatal  life 
tends  to  sw^ift  development  and  developmental  abbrevi- 
ation. The  new-born  animal  is  soon  fitted,  under  these 
conditions,  for  independent  life  on  a  comparatively  high 
level  of  competition.  This  shortness  of  the  embryonic 
period  seems  to  be  in  direct  relation  to  the  shortness  or 
entire  absence  of  a  postnatal  infancy  period.     ]^eing  thus 

1  See  Marshall's  discussion  of  the  influence  of  the  food-yolk  supply,  Bio- 
logical Lectures,  XIII. 


30  Infant  a7id  Race  Psychology. 

fitted  to  take  care  of  himself  by  advanced  uterine  develop- 
ment, he  does  not  need  after  birth  the  artificial  care,  pro- 
tection, etc.,  of  all  infants. 

On  the  other  hand,  where  we  find  a  long  postnatal  in- 
fancy period,  as  in  the  case  of  the  child,  we  find  also  a 
long  antecedent  embryo  period,  in  spite  of  the  abundant 
food-supply  afforded  by  the  placental  method  of  uterine 
nourishment. 

The  difference  in  the  two  cases  seems  to  find  some 
explanation  when  we  look  at  the  nature  of  the  mental 
endowment  secured  in  each  case  respectively.  In  the 
former  case  —  that  of  swift  intra-uterine  preparation  for 
immediate,  independent  life — the  goal  is  refined  and 
varied  instinct,  a  matter  of  organic  habit  secured  by  ear- 
lier phylogenetic  development :  so  the  pathway  of  progress 
is  already  well  trodden  and  the  young  organism  has  a 
straight  road  to  grow  along,  marked  out  by  its  hereditary 
impulse.     So  the  stretch  to  maturity  is  made  rapidly. 

In  the  case,  however,  of  long  infancy,  both  before  and 
after  birth,  the  mental  gifts  to  be  secured  are  of  a  kind  not 
already  crystallized  in  instinct.  The  hereditary  impulses 
require  a  long  ontogenetic  evolution  in  each  individual.  So 
in  spite  of  all  the  favourable  conditions  of  abundant  food, 
freedom  from  disturbing  influences,  etc.,  the  creature  must 
have  both  one  and  the  other  period  at  its  longest. 

The  psychological  considerations  —  which  I  am  careful 
to  keep  to,  not  making  any  claim  to  biological  expertness 
—  would  seem  to  favour  some  such  formulation  as  the 
following,  i.e.^  extra-uterine  infancy  period  is  to  the  intra- 
uterine embryonic  period,  the  conditions  being  equally 
favourable,  directly  as  the  amount  of  ontogenetic  develop- 
ment is  to  the  amount  of  phylogenetic  development  in  the 


Variatio7is  in   Ontogeny,  31 

entire  development  of  the  creature's  hereditary  impulse. 
For  although  with  creatures  of  instinct,  which  represent 
much  phylogeny,  the  sum  of  the  two  periods  is  short,  still 
the  prenatal  infancy  period  is  relatively  long,  while  with 
creatures  of  intelligence,  which  represent  much  ontogeny, 
although  their  whole  period  is  long,  yet  the  prenatal 
infancy  period  is  relatively  short. 

Furthermore,  a  great  class  of  mechanical  influences, 
such  as  external  strain  and  stress,  accidents,  sudden 
changes  in  environment,  cause  modifications  of  the  physi- 
ological conditions,  and  so  also  modifications  of  the  stages 
of  growth  during  the  whole  infancy  period.  Biologists 
recognize  the  need  of  restricting  their  expectations  of 
recapitulation  to  circumstances  in  which  the  physiologi- 
cal conditions  have  been  normal. 

The  great  cause,  however,  of  departures  from  the  series 
demanded  by  the  theory  of  recapitulation  in  a  given  case 
is  that  which  is  known  in  general  biology  technically  as 
'fortuitous'  or  'spontaneous  variation.'  The  law  upon 
the  basis  of  which  natural  selection  gets  application  in  the 
preservation  of  adult  organisms  —  the  law  of  supply,  by 
which  a  great  variety  of  forms  is  secured  to  select  from  — 
this  law  applies  none  the  less  to  immature  organisms. 
Not  only  do  the  fittest  adults  survive,  but  also  the  fittest 
embryos  develop.  And  it  is  only  a  further  application  of 
the  same  truth  —  an  application  recently  put  in  evidence 
by  Weismann  {Romanes  Lecture,  Oxford,  1894),  under  the 
term  *  Intra-Selection' — that  single  organs  of  one  and 
the   same   creature  are   subject    to  such  selection.^     It  is 

1  I  aim  to  show  in  my  theory  of  motor  adaptation  developed  below 
(Chap.  VII.),  that  the  same  principle  of  variation  with  natural  selection  appHes 
also  to  the  single  acts  by  which  new  functions  are  started  and  new  adapta- 
tions secured,  —  what  I  call  'Organic  Selection.' 


32  Infant  and  Race  Psychology. 

easy  then  to  see  that  the  actual  course  of  development  of 
an  organism  along  the  line  of  stages  marked  out  by  the 
earlier  race  development  might  be  disturbed  at  any  point 
by  the  operation  of  natural  selection.  For  under  new 
conditions  an  embryo  which  departs  in  some  way  from  the 
series  demanded  by  recapitulation  may  by  that  very  fact 
be  fitted  to  survive,  and  so  be  seized  upon  by  natural 
selection. 1  Sedgwick  maintains  also  that  variations  found 
in  adult  forms  are  also  reflected  in  the  embryo.  He  says 
in  the  paper  referred  to  in  the  last  note  (p.  41)  :  "Varia- 
tions do  not  merely  affect  the  non-early  period  of  life  where 
they  are  of  immediate  functional  importance  to  the  animal, 
but,  on  the  contrary,  they  are  inherent  in  the  germ  and 
affect  more  or  less  profoundly  the  whole  of  development." 
Coming  back  to  mental  development,  we  should  expect 
to  find  a  similar  state  of  things  :  the  recapitulation  of 
mental  stages  in  the  history  of  the  child  should  show 
similar  breaks.  Abundant  'food  supply'  in  the  shape  of 
lessons,  rich  suggestions  in  its  social  and  educational  life, 
urging  forward  in  tasks  of  mind,  etc.,  should  give  preco- 
cious mental  development  in  the  sense  of  early  maturity  of 
mind.  The  stages  normally  prescribed  for  natural  growth 
may  thus  be  abbreviated.     The  same  effect   is   produced 

1  This  influence  of  'variation'  does  not  seem  to  have  had  sufficient  empha- 
sis by  embryologists;  but  see  the  illustrations  of  it  given  by  Marshall,  who, 
nevertheless,  rather  leaves  it  to  be  assumed  than  definitely  states  it.  The  re- 
cent paper  by  Sedgwick,  Quarterly  yournal  of  Microscopic  Science  (April, 
1894),  endeavours,  however,  to  reconstruct  the  theory  of  recapitulation  in 
view  of  the  facts  of  variation.  He  finds  that  only  those  stages  of  an- 
cestral form  are  preserved  in  embryos  which  represent  conditions  of  larval 
existence  in  the  ancestral  line,  the  point  being  that  the  independent  life  of 
larvae  have  required  the  full  development  of  organs  for  actual  functions  and  so 
secured  their  preservation  in  the  latter  series  of  embryonic  changes,  the 
change  from  larval  to  embryonic  development  being  due  to  variation. 


Variations  in   Ontogeny.  33 

also  by  accidents  of  environment.  Newsboys  and  street 
gamins  become  sharp  and  mentally  agile  to  a  phenome- 
nal degree  from  their  method  of  life,  while  boys  reared  in 
the  artificial  seclusion  and  solitude  of  the  single  son,  edu- 
cated by  a  tutor  in  his  father's  house,  show  the  contrary 
character. 

The  fact  of  variation,  however,  should  here,  as  on  the 
biological  side,  have  supreme  emphasis.  No  two  children 
are  alike.  This  is  a  commonplace  ;  but  its  true  meaning 
is  not  a  commonplace.  Its  meaning  is  not  limited  to  the 
fact  that  the  child,  A,  has  a  different  temperament,  differ- 
ent tastes,  different  memory  type,  etc.,  from  the  child,  B. 
It  means  further  that  this  difference  is  the  only  means  to 
human  progress,  —  the  only  supply  of  material  for  the 
selection  of  the  fittest  under  the  action  of  a  progressive 
social  environment. 

I  do  not  care  to  enlarge  here  upon  the  extraordinary 
pedagogical  aspects  of  this  theme  :  they  await  attention 
later  on.^  I  note  it  here  as  a  fact  important  in  the  theory 
of  mental  development.  If  it  be  a  fact,  then  all  infant 
observations  must  be  read  in  the  light  of  it.  No  child's 
deeds  should  be  given  universal  value  without  a  critical 
examination,  before  which  even  the  most  competent  psy- 
chologist might  well  quail.  For  how  do  we  know  that 
this  child  has  not  had  artificial  rearing  so  far  in  its  life, 
how  know  that  he  has  not  experienced  accidents  of  environ- 
ment which  produce  those  'developmental  conveniences  ' 
of  mental  behaviour  which  psychologists  may  recognize  as 
artificial  short-cuts  from  one  stage  of  growth  to  another ; 
how  know  that  he  does  but  show  anachronisms  of  develop- 
ment forced  upon  him  by  malformation  of  brain,  body,  or 

^  In  my  proposed  volume. 
D 


34  Infant  and  Race  Psychology, 

limb  ?  Or  is  he  not  himself  in  some  important  respect  — 
as  to  filial  instinct,  premature  sexuality,  unusually  strong 
or  early  thrill  of  nervous  emotion,  etc. — a  variation,  for 
life  or  for  speedy  death  ?     We  do  not  know. 

If  the  morphologist,  whose  specimens  are  laid  out  on 
glass  and  bottled  in  jars,  is  confused  by  the  perpetual 
anomalies  of  recapitulation,  which  make  it  necessary  for 
him  to  arm  himself  with  all  the  cautions  formulated  by 
Balfour,  Marshall,  Adam  Sedgwick,^  and  others ;  then 
where  is  the  morphologist  of  mind,  whose  specimens  are 
hidden  behind  all  the  screens  of  social  convention,  mater- 
nal pride  and  tenderness,  and  all  the  hideous  realities  of 
ignorant  nursery  customs.-^  All  he  can  get  is  an  occa- 
sional snap-shot  at  a  baby.  And,  alas,  this  is  more  than 
most  psychologists  seem  to  want ! 

I  am  obliged,  therefore,  to  modify  even  further  the 
principle  which  seemed  safe  in  our  earlier  paragraph,  i.e., 
that  the  order  of  an  infant's  stages  of  development  might 
be  considered  constant.  It  is  only  true  if  we  know  that 
the  'stage'  is  really  an  universal  and  regular  stage.  To  be 
such  it  must  lie  between  two  other  'stages'  just  as  universal 
and  regular.  With  this  caution  we  may  use  the  rule  with 
two  very  different  degrees  of  value,  according  as  we  are 
dealing  with  the  ontogeny  of  man  or  with  his  phylogeny, 
—  with  what  a  human  mind  goes  through  from  cradle  to 
grave  on  one  hand,  and  with  what,  on  the  other  hand,  we 
may  take  from  this  development,  as  representing  the  race 
history  of  man,  either  the  history  of  the  species  or  the 
wider  reach  of  animal  race  history. 

For  it  is  clear  that  the  stages  of  human  ontogeny  may 
be  built  up  from  a  wide  series  of  observations  of  different 

^  In  Quarterly  yournal  of  Microscopic  Science,  April,  1 894. 


Variations  in   Ontogeny.  35 

children  under  varied  conditions.  So  the  embryologists 
estabHsh  the  ontogeny  of  a  species  with  great  exactness 
and  nicety  of  observation.  In  this  way  the  widest  reports 
of  single  observers  of  children  get  their  value  —  a  value 
for  science,  and  especially  for  education. 

But  such  a  science  as  comparative  mental  morphology 
—  and  even  worse,  that  of  mental  embryology  —  is  at 
present  a  chimera.  How  can  we  say  anything  about 
recapitulation  when  we  know  so  little  about  mental 
ontogeny  and  less,  perhaps,  about  comparative  mental 
physiology }  In  popular  phrase,  that  is :  how  can  we 
compare  the  development  of  the  infant  with  that  of  the 
animal  series,  when  we  know  neither  how  the  child  de- 
velops nor  what  is  actually  taking  place  in  his  conscious- 
ness, in  any  great  detail,  at  any  stage  to  which  he  may 
have  developed  ? 


CHAPTER    II. 

A  New  Method  of  Child  Study. 
§  I.    Critical. 

The  current  discussions  of  the  more  elementary  mental 
processes  show  that  we  lack  clearness  in  our  conceptions 
of  the  earlier  stages  of  mental  life.  This  is  evident 
enough  to  call  out  frequent  appeals  for  'scientific'  child 
study.  The  word  '  scientific '  is  all  right,  as  far  as  it 
goes ;  but  as  soon  as  we  come  to  ask  what  constitutes 
scientific  child  study,  and  why  it  is  that  we  have  so  little 
of  it,  we  find  no  clear  answer ;  and  we  go  on  as  before, 
accepting  the  same  anecdotes  of  fond  mothers  and  repeat- 
ing the  observations  of  Egger  and  Max  Muller. 

Now  there  are  only  two  ways  of  studying  a  child,  as  of 
studying  any  other  object  —  observation  and  experiment. 
But  who  can  observe,  and  who  can  experiment .''  Who 
can  look  through  a  telescope  and  '  observe '  a  new 
satellite }  Only  a  skilful  astronomer.  Who  can  hear  a 
patient's  hesitating  speech  and  'observe'  aphasia.?  Only 
a  neurologist.  Observation  means  the  acutest  exercise 
of  the  discriminating  faculty  of  the  scientific  specialist. 
And  yet  many  of  the  observations  which  we  have  in  this 
field  were  made  by  the  average  mother,  who  knows  less 
about  the  human  body  than  she  does  about  the  moon  or 
a  wild  flower,  or  by  the  average  father,  who  sees  his  child 

36 


Critical.  37 

for  an  hour  a  clay,  when  the  boy  is  dressed  up,  and  who 
has  never  slept  in  the  same  room  with  him  in  his  life  ; 
by  people  who  have  never  heard  the  distinction  between 
reflex  and  voluntary  action,  or  that  between  nervous  adap- 
tation and  conscious  selection.  Only  the  psychologist  can 
'  observe '  the  child,  and  he  must  be  so  saturated  with 
his  information  and  his  theories  that  the  conduct  of  the 
child  becomes  instinct  with  meaning  for  his  theories  of 
mind  and  body. 

It  is  evident,  however,  that  all  faithful  recording  is  of 
importance,  and  that  this  may  be  done  by  all  those  who 
can  be  thoroughly  objective  and  unprejudiced  in  the  pres- 
ence of  children.  I  believe  that  many  parents  can  do 
this  with  very  great  accuracy  ;  but  there  remains  still  the 
uncertainty,  when  such  records  are  taken  up  for  interpre- 
tation, as  to  whether  the  parent  or  nurse,  in  a  particular 
case,  Jias  been  free  from  the  influences  of  affection,  pride, 
jealousy,  etc.  On  the  whole,  judging  from  the  records 
in  this  branch  of  psychology,  the  science  would  better 
wait  till  its  competent  workers  realize  their  opportunities 
and  seriously  study  the  children  for  themselves. 

And  as  for  'experiment,'  greater  still  is  the  need. 
Many  a  thing  a  child  is  said  to  do,  a  little  judicious 
experimenting  —  a  little  arrangement  of  the  essential 
requirements  of  the  act  in  question  —  shows  it  is  alto- 
gether incapable  of  doing.  But  to  do  this  we  must  have 
our  theories,  and  have  our  critical  moulds  arranged  be- 
forehand. That  most  vicious  and  Philistine  attempt  in 
some  quarters  to  put  science  in  the  straight-jacket  of 
barren  observation,  to  draw  the  life-blood  of  all  science  — 
speculative  advance  into  the  secrets  of  things  —  this  ultra- 
positivistic  cry  has  come  here  as  everywhere  else,  and  put 


38  A  New  Method  of  Child  Study. 

a  ban  upon  theory.  On  the  contrary,  give  us  theories, 
theories,  always  theories !  Let  every  man  who  has  a 
theory  pronounce  his  theory  !  This  is  just  the  difference 
between  the  average  mother  and  the  good  psychologist 
—  she  has  no  theories,  he  has ;  he  has  no  interests,  she 
has.  She  may  bring  up  a  family  of  a  dozen  and  not  be 
able  to  make  a  single  trustworthy  observation  ;  he  may 
be  able,  from  one  sound  of  one  yearling,  to  confirm 
theories  of  the  neurologist  and  educator,  which  are  mo- 
mentous for  the  future  training  and  welfare  of  the  child. 

In  the  matter  of  experimenting  with  children,  therefore, 
our  theories  must  guide  our  work  —  guide  it  into  channels 
which  are  safe  for  the  growth  of  the  child,  stimulating 
to  his  powers,  definite  and  enlightening  in  the  outcome. 
All  this  has  been  largely  lacking,  I  think,  so  far,  both 
in  scientific  psychology  and  in  applied  pedagogy.  The 
implications  of  physiological  and  mental  is  so  close  in 
infancy,  the  mere  animal  can  do  so  much  to  ape  reason, 
and  the  rational  is  so  helpless  under  the  leading  of  in- 
stinct, impulse,  and  external  necessity,  that  the  task  is 
excessively  difficult  —  to  say  nothing  of  the  extreme  deli- 
cacy and  tenderness  of  the  budding  tendrils  of  the  mind. 
Experiment .''  Every  time  we  send  a  child  out  of  the 
home  to  the  school,  we  subject  him  to  experiment  of  the 
most  serious  and  alarming  kind.  He  goes  into  the  hands 
of  a  teacher  who  is  not  only  not  wise  unto  the  child's 
salvation,  but  who  is  on  the  contrary  a  machine  for 
administering  a  single  experiment,  to  an  infinite  variety 
of  children.  It  is  perfectly  certain  that  two  in  every 
three  children  are  irretrievably  damaged  or  hindered  in 
their  mental  and  moral  development  in  the  school  ;  but 
I  am  not  at  all  sure  that  they  would  fare  any  better  if 


Critical.  39 

they  stayed  at  home !  The  children  are  experimented 
with  so  much  and  so  unwisely,  in  any  case,  that  it  is 
possible  that  a  little  intentional  experiment,  guided  by 
real  insight  and  psychological  information,  would  do  them 
good. 

With  this  preamble,  I  wish  to  call  attention  to  a  possible 
method  of  experimenting  with  young  children,  which  has 
not  been  before  noted  to  my  knowledge.^  In  endeavouring 
to  bring  questions  like  the  degree  of  memory,  recognition, 
association,  etc.,  present  in  an  infant,  to  a  practical  test, 
considerable  embarrassment  has  always  been  experienced 
in  construing  the  child's  responses  safely.  Of  course  the 
only  way  a  child's  mind  can  be  studied  is  through  its  I 
expression  —  facial,  lingual,  vocal,  muscular  ;  and  the  first  ^ 
question,  i.e.,  What  did  the  infant  do.?  must  be  followed 
by  a  second,  i.e.,  What  did  his  doing  that  mean  }  And 
the  second  question  is,  as  I  have  said,  the  harder  question, 
and  the  one  which  requires  more  knowledge  and  insight. 
It  is  evident,  on  the  surface,  that  the  farther  away  we  get 
in  the  child's  life  from  simple  inherited  or  reflex  responses, 
the  more  complicated  do  the  responsive  processes  become, 
and  the  greater  becomes  the  difficulty  of  analyzing  them, 
and  arriving  at  a  true  picture  of  the  real  mental  condition 
which  lies  back  of  them. 

To  illustrate  this  confusion,  I  may  cite  about  the  one 
problem  which  psychologists  have  attempted  to  solve  by 
experiments  on  children  :  the  determination  of  the  order 
of  rise  of  the  child's  perceptions  of  the  different  quali- 
ties of  colour.  Preyer  starts  the  series  of  experiments  by 
showing  a  child  various  colours  and    requiring  the   child 

1  My  first  discussion  of  it  was  in  Science,  New  York,  April  21,  1893. 


40  A  New  Method  of  Child  Study. 

to  name  them,  the  results  being  expressed  in  percentages 
of  true  answers  to  the  whole  number.  Now  this  experi- 
ment involves  no  less  than  four  different  questions,  and 
the  results  give  absolutely  no  clue  to  their  analysis.  It 
involves,  i.  The  child's  distinguishing  different  colours 
simultaneously  displayed  before  it,  i.e.,  the  complete  de- 
velopment of  the  child's  colour  sensation  apparatus;  2.  The 
child's  ability  to  recognize  or  identify  a  colour  after  having 
seen  it  once ;  3.  An  association  between  the  child's  colour- 
seeing  and  word-hearing  and  speaking  memories,  by  which 
the  name  is  brought  up ;  4.  Equally  ready  facility  in  the 
pronunciation  of  the  various  colour  names  which  the 
child  recognizes :  and  there  is  the  further  embarrassment, 
that  any  such  process  which  involves  association,  is  as 
varied  as  the  lives  of  children.  The  single  fact  that 
speech  is  acquired  long  after  objects  and  some  colours  are 
distinguished,  shows  that  Preyer's  results  are  worthless  as 
far  as  the  problem  of  colour  perception  is  concerned. 

That  the  fourth  element  pointed  out  above  is  a  real  source 
of  confusion  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  children  recognize 
many  words  which  they  cannot  pronounce  readily.  Binet, 
who  represents  the  second  phase  in  the  development  of 
this  experimental  problem,  realized  this,  and  varied  the 
conditions  by  naming  a  colour  and  then  requiring  the 
child  to  pick  out  the  corresponding  colour.  This  gave 
results  different  not  only  from  Preyer's,  but  also  from 
those  which  Binet  reached  by  Preyer's  method.  For 
example,  Preyer's  child  identified  yellow  better  than  any 
other  colour,  a  result  which  no  one  has  confirmed. 

The  further  objection  that  colours  might  be  distin- 
guished before  the  word-association  is  established  at  all, 
or  that  colour-words  might  be  interchanged  or  confused  by 


CriticaL 


41 


the  child, ^  is  also  seen  by  Binct,  and  his  attempt  to  elimi- 
nate that  source  of  error  constitutes  what  we  may  call  the 
third  stage  in  the  statement  of  the  problem.  He  adopts 
the  DietJiodc  de  reconnaissance  as  preferable  to  the  mctJiodc 
d' appellation.  This  consisted,  in  his  experiments,  in  show- 
ing to  a  child  a  coloured  counter,  and  then  asking  the 
child  to  pick  out  the  same  colour  from  a  number  of  differ- 
ent coloured  counters. 

This  reduces  the  question  to  the  second  of  the  four  I 
have  named  above.  It  is  the  usual  method  of  testing  for 
colour-blindness.  It  answers  very  well  for  colour-blind- 
ness ;  for  what  we  really  want  to  learn  in  the  case  of  a 
sailor  or  a  signal-man  is  whether  he  can  recognize  a  deter- 
mined colour  when  it  is  repeated ;  that  is,  does  he  know 
green  or  red  to  be  the  same  as  his  former  experience  of 
green  or  red }  But  it  is  evident  that  there  is  still  a  more 
fundamental  question  in  the  matter  —  the  real  question  of 
colour  perception.  It  is  quite  possible  a  child  might  not 
recognize  an  isolated  colour  quality  when  he  could  really 
very  well  distinguish  colour  qualities  side  by  side.  It  is 
the  question  just  now  coming  to  the  front,  the  question  of 
absolute  vs.  relative  recognition,  or  immediate  vs.  mediate 
recognition.^  The  last  question  is  this  :  When  does  the 
child  get  the  different  colour  sensations  (not  recognitions), 
and  in  what  order } 

A  further  point  of  criticism  of  Binet's  results  serves  to 
illustrate  my  argument.  Binet  rules  out  the  influence  of 
the  word    memories    which    were    necessary   to    Preyer's 

^  A  good  instance  of  such  confusion,  between  red  and  blue,  and  its  correct 
interpretation,  is  given  by  Miss  Shinn,  N'otes  on  the  Development  of  a  Child, 
Part  I.,  pp.  38  and  50. 

2  See  the  discussion  of  the  question  of  tone  recognitions,  below.  Chap. 
XIV.,  §  3. 


42  A  New  Method  of  Child  Study. 

results,  by  his  vietJwdc  de  reconnaissance.  The  child  recog- 
nizes again  the  colour  just  seen.  Now  those  who  have  fol- 
lowed the  course  of  recent  discussions  of  recognition  will 
remember  that  the  mediation  of  word-associations  is  not 
ruled  out  in  these  cases  in  children  of  three  to  five  years  old 
or  even  younger.  Lehmann  finds  coloured  wools  are  recog- 
nized when  the  colours  are  those  whose  names  are  known 
{Bencnnimgsassociatioii),  and  that  shades  which  have  not 
peculiar  names,  or  whose  names  are  not  known,  are  not 
recognized.  Others  have  held  that  an  unobserved  or 
unintelligible  element — a  Nebenvorstellnng  —  may  serve 
as  the  link  of  recognition  without  rising  again  to  clear 
consciousness  a  second  time.  It  is,  of  course,  useless,  if 
these  results  be  trustworthy,  to  attempt  to  get  recognitions 
clear  of  word  memories  after  colour  names  have  once  been 
learned  by  the  child.  It  would  seem  that  the  question 
ought  to  be  taken  up  with  younger  children.  Binet's 
experiments  were  in  the  interval  between  the  child's 
thirty-second  and  fortieth  months.  It  is  perhaps  a  con- 
firmation of  Lehmann's  position,  that  the  colours  least 
recognized  in  Binet's  list  are  shades  whose  names  are  less 
familiar  to  children  ;  his  list,  in  order  of  certainty  of  rec- 
ognition, is  red,  blue,  green,  rose,  maroon,  violet,  and 
yellow,  by  the  metJiode  d appellation ;  and,  by  both  methods 
together,  red,  blue,  orange,  maroon,  rose,  violet,  green, 
white,  and  yellow.^ 

§  2.    Expository. 

This  colour  question  may  suffice  to  make  clear  the  essen- 
tials of  a  true  experimental  method.     Only  when  we  catch 

1  Calculated  from  Binet's  detailed  results  {Revue  Philosophiqiie,  1890,  II., 
582  ff.)  by  Mr.  F.  Tracy;  see  his  book,  The  Psychology  of  Childhood,  p.  14, 
and  cf.  the  results  of  my  own  experiments  below,  Chap.  IV.,  §  i. 


Expository.  43 

the  motor  response,  or  a  direct  reflex,  in  its  simplicity,  is 
it  a  true  index  of  the  sensory  stimulus  in  its  simplicity. 
I  have  accordingly  attempted  to  reach  a  method  of  child 
study  of  such  a  character  as  to  yield  a  series  of  experi- 
ments whose  results  would  be  in  terms  of  the  most  funda- 
mental motor  reactions  of  the  infant,  which  could  be  easily 
and  pleasantly  conducted,  and  which  would  be  of  wide 
application.  (-The  child's  hand  movements  are,  I  think, 
the  most  nearly  ideal  in  this  respect.  The  hand  reflects 
the  first  stimulations,  the  most  stimulations,  and,  becom- 
ing the  most  mobile  and  executive  organ  of  volition,  attains 
the  most  varied  and  interesting  offices  of  utility.  We 
have  spontaneous  arm  and  hand  movements,  reflex  move- 
ments, reaching-out  movements,  grasping  movements, 
imitative  movements,  manipulating  movements,  and  vol- 
untary efforts  —  all  these,  in  order,  reflecting  the  devel- 
opment of  the  mind.  The  organs  of  speech  are  only  later 
brought  into  use,  and  their  use  for  speech  involves  an 
already  high  development  of  mind,  hence  the  error  in 
Preyer's  results.  It  has  accordingly  seemed  to  me  worth 
while  to  find  whether  a  child's  reaching  movements  would 
reflect  with  any  degree  of  regularity  the  modifications  of 
its  sensibility,  and,  if  so,  how  far  this  could  be  made  a 
method  of  experimenting  with  young  children.^ 

I  may  adduce  one  or  two  considerations  which  tend  to 
show  that  some  such  dynamogenic  method  is  theoretically 
vaHd.  There  are  some  results  already  recognized  in  the 
psychology  of  sense  and  movement  which  lend  confirma- 

1  The  suggestion  of  Mrs.  Ladd  Franklin  (  The  Psychological  Revieio,  I.,  1894, 
p.  202)  is  quite  in  accord  with  this  requirement,  i.e.,  that  Sach's  discovery 
of  reflex  changes  in  the  width  of  the  pupil  when  certain  colours  are  looked  at 
might  be  used  to  test  the  colour  sensations  of  very  young  children. 


44  ^  New  Method  of  Child  Study. 

tion  to  this  idea.  The  facts  that  the  most  motile  organs 
have  acutest  scnsibiUty,  notably  the  hand  and  fingers ; 
that  certain  marked  types  of  action,  such  as  imitation,  arise 
first  in  connection  with  the  hand ;  that  the  central  organic 
preparation  for  volition  is  secured  first  in  the  arrangements 
for  hand  movements:^  all  these  facts  indicate  that  the 
hand  movements  are  the  best  index  of  general  and  special 
sensibility  in  the  infant.  Fere  maintains  that  sensory 
stimulations  of  all  kinds  increase  the  maximum  hand  pres- 
sure. Colours  seen  have  regular,  and  each  its  peculiar, 
effect  upon  movement.  Tones  have  similar  influence.  The 
ticking  of  a  watch  is  more  clearly  perceived  if  movements 
are  made  at  the  same  time.  Further,  the  reaction-time  of 
hand  movements  is  shorter  if  the  stimulus  (sound,  etc.) 
be  more  intense.  There  is  an  enlargement  of  the  hand, 
through  increased  blood  pressure,  when  a  loud  sound  is 
heard.  The  fact  of  muscle-reading,  and  its  experimental 
demonstration  by  Jastrow,  together  with  the  whole  series 
of  facts  shown  by  recent  experiments  in  so-called  'uncon- 
scious movements'  by  diseased  patients ^ — these,  and  a 
variety  of  other  facts  upon  which  the  law  of  '  dynamogene- 
sis '  rests,  seem  to  afford  justification  for  the  view  that  the 
infant's  hand  movements  in  reaching  and  grasping  are  the 
best  index  of  the  kind  and  intensity  of  its  sensory  ex- 
periences. Magendie  ^  long  ago  suggested  measuring 
changes  in  sensibility  by  the  corresponding  changes  in 
blood  pressure. 

Further,  it  is  not  necessary  to  embarrass  ourselves  with 
the  question  whether  the  hand  movements  are  voluntary 

^  Soltmann;    cf.  the  chapter  below  on  the  'Origin  of  VoHtion,'  especially 
pp.  421,  424. 
■^  Binet,  Janet. 
^  Fere,  Sensalioii  et  Mouvement,  \>.  56. 


Expository.  45 

or  not.  However  we  may  differ  as  to  the  circumstances 
of  the  rise  of  volition,  it  is  still  true  that  after  its  rise  the 
child's  reactions  are  for  a  long  time  quite  under  the  lead 
of  its  sensory  life.  It  lives  so  fully  in  the  immediate 
present  and  so  closely  in  touch  with  its  environment,  that 
the  influences  which  lead  to  movement  can  be  detected 
with  great  regularity.  In  this  case  the  sensations  which 
are  stimuli  to  movement  become  what  we  may  also  call 
'effort  stimuli,'  and  the  child's  efforts  with  his  hands 
become  indications  of  the  relative  degree  of  discrimination, 
attractiveness,  etc.,  of  the  different  sensations  which  call 
the  efforts  out. 

Suppose  we  hang  up  a  piece  of  meat  over  Carlo's  head 
and  tell  him  to  jump  for  it.  His  first  jump  falls  short  of 
the  meat.  He  jumps  again  and  clears  a  greater  distance. 
Why  does  he  jump  farther  the  second  time  ?  Not  because 
he  argues  that  a  harder  jump  is  necessary  to  secure  the 
meat;  but  because  by  the  first  jump  he  got  more  smell, 
blood  colour,  and  appetite  stimulus  from  the  meat.  Now 
suppose  it  to  be  a  red  rag  instead  of  meat,  and  Carlo 
refuse  to  jump  a  second  time.  This  is  not  because  he 
concludes  the  rag  would  choke  him,  but  because  he  gets  a 
kind  of  sensation  which  takes  away  what  appetite  stimulus 
he  already  had.  The  thing  is  a  thing  of  sensational 
dynamogeny  or  'suggestion,'  and  the  child's  state  of  mind 
up  to  his  twenty-fourth  month,  more  or  less,  is  just  about 
the  same. 

The  following  questions,  I  think,  might  be  taken  up  by 
some  such  method  as  this  :  — 

I.  The  presence  of  different  colour  sensations  as 
shown  by  the  number  and  persistence  of  the  child's 
efforts  to  grasp  the  colour. 


46  A  New  Method  of  Child  Shtdy. 

2.  The  relative  attractiveness  of  different  colours  meas- 
ured in  the  same  way. 

3.  The  relative  attractiveness  of  different  colour  combi- 
nations. 

4.  The  relative  exactness  of  distance  estimation  as 
shown  by  the  child's  efforts  to  reach  over  distances  for 
objects. 

5.  The  relative  attractiveness  of  different  visual  out- 
lines (stars,  circles,  etc.)  cut  in  the  same  attractive  colour, 
etc. 

6.  The  relative  use  of  right,  left,  and  both  hands. 

7.  The  rise  of  imitative  movements. 

8.  The  rise  of  voluntary  movements. 

9.  The  presence  and  character  of  '  accompanying  move- 
ments '  at  different  stages  of  motor  development. 

10.  The  strength  of  desire  and  voluntary  inhibition  as 
shown  in  the  relative  persistence  of  movements  of  grasping. 

11.  The  relative  strength  of  disparate  sensations  at  dif- 
ferent periods  of  child  life,  as  shown  by  their  comparative 
expression  in  movement. 

12.  The  inhibiting  influence  of  elementary  associations, 
especially  pains,  punishments,  etc. 

I  am  quite  aware  of  the  meagreness  of  this  list ;  but  one 
has  only  to  remember  the  fact  that  there  is  no  such  thing 
yet  as  a  psycho-physics  of  the  active  life,  that  this  side  of 
psychology  is  almost  terra  incognita  to  the  experimental- 
ist.i     If   the  method  prove   reliable  in  one-half  of   these 

1  I  see  no  reason  that  a  method  could  not  be  devised  for  testing  the  motive 
influences  of  presentations  of  a  neutral  associational  character  in  terms  of  the 
time  elapsed  since  their  experience.  I  have  announced  elsewhere  (^Proceed- 
ings of  Congress  for  Exper.  Psychology,  London,  1892)  the  first  results  of  a 
research  conducted  upon  adults  by  such  a  method  and  hope  soon  to  publish 
further  details  and  inferences.      Professor  Munsterberg  has  recently  suggested 


Formula  of  the  Dynaniogenic  Method.        47 

questions,  then  so  much  gain.  I  have  applied  it  to  some 
of  them  in  a  more  or  less  incomplete  way,  in  the  case  of 
my  two  children,  H.  and  E.,  both  girls,  with  the  results 
recorded  in  subsequent  pages  of  this  book.  In  each  case 
below  I  take  occasion  to  say  to  what  extent  the  results  are 
of  real,  or  only  of  methodological,  value. 

§  3.    Formula  of  the  Dynamogenic  MetJiod. 

When  this  method  is  reduced  to  its  lowest  terms,  as  ap- 
plied to  children  old  enough  to  reach  out  for  objects  which 
they  see,  two  variable  quantities  are  always  involved.  The 
reactions  will  vary  in  some  way  with  the  distance  of  the 
object  exposed,  and  also  in  some  way  with  the  kind  of 
stimulus.  For  example,  a  child  of  perhaps  eight  months 
of  age  reaches  after  an  orange,  when  it  is  eleven  inches  in 
front  of  him,  with  great  regularity  ;  but  very  irregularly, 
or  possibly  not  at  all,  when  it  is  fourteen  inches  away. 
Again,  he  reaches  for  a  colour,  red,  when  perhaps  he  would 
not  for  a  colourless  object. 

If  we  take  the  simplest  cases  —  cases  in  which  observa- 
tion shows  the  responses  of  the  child  to  be  regular,  the  con- 
ditions of  quiet,  comfortable  position,  interest,  etc.,  being 
throughout  normal  and  undisturbed  —  we  may  consider 
these  two  things,  quality  and  distance,  as  the  only  important 
variables.  By  quality  is  meant  the  so-called  sensational 
character  of  the  stimulating  object.  If,  then,  we  further 
inquire  into  the  drawing-out  influence  of  various  stimula- 
tions, it  is  evident  that  it  will  vary  with  the  quality  {q), 
and,  in  some  inverse  ratio,  with  the  distance  {d).     In  other 

a  method  of  studying  the  influence  of  stimulations  upon  eye-movements,  atten- 
tion, etc.,  which  is  also  dynamogenic  and  proceeds  upon  somewhat  the  same 
presuppositions  {The  Psychological  Review,  I.,  pp.  441  fif.,  September,  1894). 


48  A  New  Method  of  Child  Shidy. 

words,  naming  the  calling-out  or  dynamogenic  influence  of 
a  stimulus,  D,  we  have  the  equation, 


in  which  k  is  the  sign  of  proportion. 

I  state  this  formula  not  to  be  mathematical,  but  simply, 
by  ringing  the  changes  possible  through  substitution  of 
values,  to  illustrate  the  applications  of  the  method  and  the 
limits  of  the  general  principle  of  reaction.  If  q  be  kept 
constant,  experiments  will  determine  the  law  by  which  the 
influence  of  d  changes.  Again,  experiments  at  different 
ages  would  show  the  effect  on  d  of  experience  in  associating 
visual  distance  with  muscular  distance.  Again,  keeping  d 
constant,  experiments  would  show  the  value  of  various 
sense  qualities,  the  g  values. 

An  interesting  point  emerges  when  we  inquire  the 
effect  of  zero  and  infinity  values.  If  the  child,  for  ex- 
ample, always  reaches  for  an  apple  at  nine  inches,  this 
would  be  practically  the  case  of  d=o.  But,  as  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  distance  then  has  no  influence  ;  the  whole 
possible  variation  in  D  in  successive  experiments  with 
different  ^'s  is  due  to  the  q  values  themselves.  It  is 
asked  at  once  why  the  influence  of  d  is  not  equally  ruled 
out  in  any  series  of  experiments  in  which  d  is  kept  con- 
stant, say  at  twelve  inches.  The  answer  is  :  because  in 
each  such  series  the  influence  of  d  changes  from  the 
fact  of  practice,  habit,  and  slight  fatigue.  If  the  child 
reaches  for  a  blue-^  at  twelve  inches,  and  just  gets  it,  he 
will  then  reach  for  a  green-^  with  greater  avidity  at 
twelve  inches  than  he  would  otherwise  have  reached  for 
the  same  green-^  at  nine  inches.      So  psychology   inter- 


Formula  of  the  Dynamogcnic  Method.        49 

feres  with  mathematics.  So  the  vahie  for  d=o,  at  which 
we  have  the  purest  influence  of  q,  is  not  the  least  distance 
possible,  but  the  child's  normal  reaching  distance. 

Again,  if  the  child  just  refrains  from  reaching  for  a  </  at 
fourteen  inches,  this  means  practically  that  d—^\  that  is, 
the  influence  of  d  is  so  all-important  that  it  shuts  out  all 
relative  ^/-influences.  The  distance  inhibits  movement  alto- 
gether. But  just  here  another  psychological  factor  inter- 
feres with  the  mathematics  ;  in  some  cases  the  inhibition 
of  d  does  not  work,  and  the  child  oversteps  all  its  expe- 
rience in  violent  straining  and  tears.  These  two  so-called 
psychological  'interferences'  are  referred  to  again  later 
on,  the  latter  being,  I  think,  the  main  external  channel 
of  the  rise  of  right-  or  left-handedness.^ 

These  qualifications  make  it  evident  that  this  form  of 
mathematical  statement  shows  only  —  what  most  appeals 
to  mathematics  in  psychology  are — an  artificial  show  of 
exactness.  This  method,  like  all  other  psychological  meth- 
ods, must  be  used  with  a  thousand  cautions  and  as  many 
failures  ;  and  the  last  condition  of  such  experiments,  as 
the  first  condition  of  all  work  with  children,  is  sympathetic 
insight  into  their  mental  movements.  Only  such  sym- 
pathy and  insight  can  cope  with  the  subtle  responses 
which  a  wide-awake  child  makes  to  the  most  trifling  vari- 
ations in  our  treatment  of  him. 

I  shall  now  give  further  facts  and  experiments  illustrat- 
ing the  regularity  of  the  child's  reactions,  and  so  put  in 
evidence  the  general  principle  of  '  dynamogenesis,'  upon 
which  all  motor  development,  both  in  the  child  and  in  the 
race,  must  ultimately  rest. 

1  See  below,  Chap.  IV. 


CHAPTER    III. 

Distance  and  Colour  Perception  by  Infants. 

§  I.    Experimental. 

The  method  called  '  dynamogenic '  has  been  explained 
in  earlier  pages.  The  application  of  it  to  particular  ques- 
tions now  demands  attention,  as  far  as  the  present  writer 
has  attempted  to  apply  it. 

It  is  evident,  as  was  said  before  in  speaking  of  the  in- 
fant's responses  in  reaching  for  objects,  that  in  any  par- 
ticular case  the  element  of  distance  is  a  variable  quantity 
to  be  considered  with  the  influence  of  the  particular  stim- 
ulus in  question.  In  investigating  the  infant's  colour  sen- 
sations, therefore,  we  have  the  formula  Z^=-,  in  which  c 

d 

denotes  colour,  d  distance,  and  D  strength  of  dynamogeny, 
as  already  explained. 

I  undertook  at  the  beginning  of  my  child  H.'s  ninth 
month  to  experiment  with  her  with  a  view  to  arriving  at 
the  exact  state  of  her  colour  perception,  employing  this 
new  method.  The  arrangements  consisted  in  this  instance 
in  giving  the  infant  a  comfortable  sitting  posture,  kept 
constant  by  a  band  passing  around  her  chest  and  fastened 
securely  to  the  back  of  her  chair.  Her  arms  were  left 
bare  and  quite  free  in  their  movements.  Pieces  of  paper 
of  different  colours  were  exposed   before  her,  at  varying 

50 


ExpcriuicnfaL  51 

distances,  front,  right,  and  left.  This  was  regulated  by  a 
framework,  consisting  of  a  horizontal  rod  graded  in  inches, 
projecting  from  the  back  of  the  chair  at  a  level  with  her 
shoulder  and  parallel  with  her  arm  when  extended  straight 
forward,  and  carrying  on  it  another  rod,  also  graded  in 
inches,  at  right-angles  to  the  first.  This  second  rod  was 
thus  a  horizontal  line  directly  in  front  of  the  child,  parallel 
with  a  line  connecting  her  two  shoulders,  and  so  equally 
distant  for  both  hands.  This  second  rod  was  made  to 
slide  upon  the  first,  so  as  to  be  adjusted  at  any  desirable 
distance  from  the  child.  On  this  second  rod  the  colours, 
etc.,  were  placed  in  succession,  the  object  being  to  excite 
the  child  to  reach  for  the  colour. 

So  far  from  being  distasteful  to  the  infant,  I  found  that, 
with  pleasant  suggestions  thrown  about  the  experiments, 
the  whole  procedure  gave  her  the  most  intense  gratifica- 
tion, and  the  affair  became  one  of  her  pleasant  daily  occu- 
pations. After  each  sitting  she  was  given  a  reward  of 
some  kind. 

The  accompanying  tables  give  the  results,  both  for 
colour  and  distance,  of  217  experiments.  Of  these  in 
were  with  five  colours  and  106  with  ordinary  newspaper 
(chosen  as  a  relatively  neutral  object,  which  would  have 
no  colour  value  and  no  association,  to  the  infant).  In  the 
tables  R  stands  for  'refusal'  to  reach  out  for  the  object, 
A  for  'acceptance'  with  effort,  7\^  for  the  entire  number 
of  experiments  with  each  colour  respectively,  and  n  for 
the  entire  number  with  all  the  colours  at  each  distance 
respectively.      So    —  =  the  proportion   of  acceptances   or 

efforts  for  any  colour,  and  —  =  the  proportion  of  refusals 
for  each  distance. 


52     Distance  and  Colonic'  Perception  by  Infants. 


TABLE   I. 


Distance, 

Inches 

9 

lO 

II 

12 

13 

14 

15 

Totals. 

Ratio  ^. 

N 

R.A. 

R.A. 

R.A. 

R.A. 

R.A. 

R.A. 

R.A. 

R.      A.     N. 

Blue 

O— I 

0-4 

0-5 

1-3 

2-4 

1-5 

3-1 

7-23-30 

.78 

Red 

O—  I 

0-3 

2  —  2 

1-4 

1-7 

1-7 

5-1 

10-25-35 

•75 

White 

o— o 

0  — o 

0  — O 

O-I 

0-5 

i-i 

3-0 

4-   7-II 

.78 

Green 

o-o 

O-I 

O-I 

2-1 

1-4 

1  —  2 

2  —  0 

6-   9-15 

.68 

Brown 

O-I 

0-2 

2—1 

3-2 

0-3 

3-1 

2—0 

10—10  —  20 

•50 

Totals 

0-3 

O— lO 

4-9 

7-II 

4-23 

7-16 

15-2 

37-74-111 

•71 

Ratio  - 
n 

o 

o 

•23 

•34 

.14 

-Z1 

.92 

Total  .29 

TABLE   II. 


Distance, 
Inches 

9 

10 

II 

12 

13 

H 

15 

Totals. 

Ratio  ^. 

/?.^. 

/?.  ^. 

R.A. 

R.A. 

;?.  ^. 

i?.  ^. 

R.A. 

R.      A.     N. 

News- 
paper 

Colour 

0-3 

0— 10 

4-9 

0-17 
7-II 

0-28 
4-23 

7-16 

25-2 
15-2 

26—    80—106 
Z^-   74-111 

.76 
•71 

Totals 

0-3 

0— 10 

4-9 

7-28 

4-51 

8-49 

40-4 

63-154-217 

•74 

Ratio  ^ 
n 

•23 

•17 

.07 

.20 

•94 

Total  .26 

From  these  tables  we  might  be  able,  if  the  experiments 
were  of  sufficient  nmiiber  and  all  proper  precautions  had 


Experimoi  tal.  53 

been  taken  —  on  which  points  the  next  paragraph  may 
be  read  —  to  conchide  important  results  for  the  perception 
of  colour  and  distance.  The  following  inferences,  indeed, 
seem  to  be  safely  drawn. 

Colour.  —  The  results  are  evident  in  the  tables  (I.  and 

II.),  especially  the  columns  marked  'Ratio  —  '  and  'Ratio 

/? 

— .'     The  colours  range  themselves  in  an  order  of  attrac- 

11 

tiveness,  i.e.,  blue,  white,  red,  green,  and  brown.  Disre- 
garding white,  the  difference  between  blue  and  red  is  very 
slight  compared  to  that  between  any  other  two.  This 
confirms  Binet  as  against  Preyer,  who  puts  blue  last,  and 
also  fails  to  confirm  Preyer  in  putting  brown  before  red 
and  green.  Brown  to  my  child  —  as  tested  in  this  way  — 
seemed  to  be  about  as  neutral  as  could  well  be.  A  similar 
distaste  for  brown  was  noticed  in  the  child  observed  by 
Miss  Shinn.i  White,  on  the  other  hand,  was  more  attrac- 
tive than  green  and  slightly  more  so  than  red,  I  am  sorry 
that  my  list  does  not  include  yellow.  The  newspaper 
was,  at  reaching  distance  (9  to  10  inches)  and  a  little 
more  (up  to  14  inches),  as  attractive  as  the  average  of  the 
colours,  and  even  as  much  so  as  the  red ;  but  this  is  prob- 
ably due  to  the  fact  that  the  newspaper  experiments  came 
after  a  good  deal  of  practice  in  reaching  after  colours,  and 
a  more  exact  association  between  the  stimulus  and  its 
distance  ;  an  influence  which  I  have  remarked  upon  in  the 
general  discussion,  above,^  of  the  formula  for  the  method. 
At  15  inches  and  over,  accordingly,  the  newspaper  was 
refused  in  more  than  92  per  cent  of  the  cases,  while  blue 
was  refused  at  that  distance  in  only  75  per  cent,  and  red 
in  84  per  cent. 

1  Loc.  cit..,  p.  47.  2  Above,  pp.  48  f. 


54     Distance  and  Colour  Perception  by  Infants, 

Distajicc} — In  regard  to  the  question  of  distance,  the 
child  persistently  refused  to  reach  for  anything  put  i6 
inches  or  more  away  from  her.  At  1 5  inches  she  refused 
94  per  cent  of  all  the  cases,  92  per  cent  of  the  colour 
cases,  and,  as  I  have  said,  92  per  cent  of  the  newspaper 
cases.  At  nearer  distances  we  find  the  remarkable  uni- 
formity with  which  the  safe-distance  association  works  at 
this  early  age.  At  14  inches  only  14  per  cent  of  all  the 
cases  were  refused,  and  at  13  inches  only  about  8  per 
cent.  The  fact  that  there  was  a  larger  percentage  of 
refusals  at  11  and  12  inches  than  at  13  and  14  inches, 
is  seen  from  the  table  (I.)  to  be  due  to  the  influence  of  the 
brown,  which  was  refused  consistently  when  more  than 
10  inches  away.  The  fact  that  there  were  no  refusals 
to  reach  for  anything  exposed  within  reaching  distance 
(10  inches) — other  attractive  objects  being  kept  away  — 
shows  two  things  :  (i)  the  very  fine  estimation  visually 
of  the  distance  represented  by  the  arm-length,  thus  em- 
phasizing the  element  of  muscular  sensations  of  arm- 
movement  in  the  perception  of  distance  generally ;  and 
(2)  the  great  uniformity  at  this  age  of  the  phenomenon 
of  '  sensori-motor  suggestion '  ^  upon  which  this  method 
of  child  study  is  based.  In  respect  to  the  first  point,  it 
will  be  remembered  that  the  child  does  not  begin  to  reach 
for  anything  that  it  sees  until  the  fourth  or  sixth  week ; 
so  it  is  evident  at  what  a  remarkably  fast  rate  this  associa- 
tion between  those  obscure  factors  of  size,  perspective, 
light  and  shade,  etc.,  which  signify  distance  to  the  eye, 
becomes  associated  with  arm-movements,  in  such  a  way 
that  the  inhibition  of  movement  by  sensations  from  the 
other  sense  is  secured  so  early. 

^  See  also  the  remarks  in  Chap.  IV.,  §  2.        ^  gee  below,  Chap.  VI.,  §  3. 


Critical.  55 

In  regard  to  the  relative  use  of  the  two  hands  in  these 
and  other  experiments, — this  is  a  topic  to  which  I  may 
devote  the  next  brief  chapter. 


§  2.    Critical. 

It  is  in  place  to  recall  the  criticisms  already  offered  ^ 
upon  the  colour  experiments  of  Preyer  and  Binet.  I  think 
the  method  thus  applied  successfully  obviates  all  these 
difficulties  of  earlier  methods.  There  are  certain  other 
requirements  of  proper  procedure,  however,  which,  as  far 
as  I  am  aware,  have  never  been  duly  weighed  by  any  one 
who  has  experimented  with  young  children. 

In  the  first  place,  fatigue  is  a  matter  of  considerable 
importance,  not  only  on  this  method  but  on  any  other. 
Again,  the  child  is  peculiarly  susceptible  to  the  appeals  of 
change,  novelty,  chance,  or  happy  suggestion  ;  and  often 
the  failure  to  respond  to  a  stimulus  is  due  to  distraction 
or  to  discomfort  rather  than  to  lack  of  intrinsic  interesting 
quality.  In  respect  to  fatigue,  I  would  say  that  the  first 
signs  of  restlessness,  or  arbitrary  loss  of  interest,  in  a 
series  of  stimulations,  is  sufficient  warning,  and  all  attempts 
at  further  experimenting  should  cease.  Often  the  child 
is  in  a  state  of  indisposition,  of  trifling  nervous  irritability, 
etc.  ;  this  should  be  detected  beforehand  and  then  nothing 
should  be  undertaken.  No  series  longer  than  three  trials 
should  be  attempted  without  changing  the  child's  position, 
resting  its  attention  with  a  song,  or  a  game,  etc.,  and  thus 
leading  it  fresh  to  its  'task'  again.  Further,  no  single 
stimulus,  as  a  colour,  should  be  twice  repeated  without  a 
change  to  some  other  :  since  the  child's  eagerness  or  alert- 

1  Above,  Chap.  II.,  §  i. 


56     Distajzce  and  Colour  Perception  of  Infants. 

ness  is  somewhat  satisfied  by  the  first  effort  and  a  new 
thing  is  necessary  to  bring  him  out  to  full  exercise  again. 
Further,  after  each  effort  or  two  the  child  should  be  given 
the  object  reached  for  to  hold  or  play  with  for  a  moment ; 
otherwise  he  grows  to  apprehend  that  the  whole  affair  is 
a  case  of  Tantalus.  In  all  these  matters,  very  much  de- 
pends upon  the  knowledge  and  care  of  the  experimenter, 
and  his  ability  to  keep  the  child  in  a  normal  condition  of 
pleasurable  muscular  exercise  throughout.^ 

Coming  to  colour  experiments,  several  requirements 
would  appear  to  be  necessary  for  exact  results.  Should 
not  the  colours  chosen  be  equal  in  purity,  intensity,  lustre, 
illumination,  etc.  }  In  reference  to  these  qualitative  dif- 
ferences,—  those  which  are  really  important  in  order  to 
keep  our  symbol  constant  as  respects  all  but  the  qualita- 
tive colour  influence,  —  I  think  only  that  degree  of  care 
need  be  exercised  which  good  comparative  judgment  pro- 
vides. Colours  of  about  equal  objective  intensity,  of  no 
gloss,  of  relatively  evident  spectral  purity,  under  constant 
illumination,  —  this  is  all  that  is  required  :  for  the  variations 
due  to  the  grosser  influences  I  have  mentioned,  such  as 
condition  of  attention,  physical  unrest,  disturbing  noises, 
sights,  etc.,  are  of  greater  influence  than  any  of  these  more 
recondite  objective  variations  in  the  stimulus.  Intensity 
and  lustre,  however,  are  certainly  important.  It  is  possible, 
by  carefully  choosing  a  room  of  pretty  constant  daylight 
illumination,  and  setting  the  experiments  at  the  same  hour 
each  day,  to  secure  a  regular  degree  of  brightness  if  the 
colours  themselves  are  equally  bright :  and  lustre  may  be 

1  It  is  on  account  of  my  extreme  care  in  these  points  that  the  number  of 
experiments  recorded  in  the  tables  in  this  chapter  is  so  small:  as  it  was,  they 
extended  over  a  period  of  more  than  six  months.  I  was  then  obliged  to  sep- 
arate myself  from  the  child,  and  so  the  series  came  to  an  end. 


Critical,  5  7 

ruled  out  by  using  coloured  wools  or  blotting-papers.  The 
papers  used  by  myself  were  coloured  blotting-papers,  which 
I  selected  by  their  empirical  properties  as  good  for  the 
purpose.  The  omission  of  yellow  is  due  to  the  absence,  in 
my  neighbourhood,  of  a  yellow  paper  that  satisfied  me.  I 
did  not  care  to  introduce  another  element  of  uncertainty 
in  the  way  of  change  of  texture  or  general  character  as  to 
shape,  form,  etc.,  as  an  altogether  different  object  would 
have  done. 

The  only  valid  criticism,  therefore,  on  the  tables  is  that 
which  exposes  the  small  number  of  experiments  ;  and  an 
examination  of  the  table  proves  it  well  taken.  It  has  been 
suggested  to  me  by  a  friend^  that  the  results  at  11,  12,  13, 
and  14  inches  might  be  taken  together  for  each  colour ; 
since  the  element  of  distance  would  not  give  important 
variations  within  these  limits.  This,  it  will  be  seen,  how- 
ever, on  calculation,  does  not  alter  the  order  of  colour 
preference,  except  to  lay  more  emphasis  on  white. 

On  the  whole,  therefore,  I  attach  some  little  importance 
to  the  experiments  apart  from  their  illustrative  value  and 
their  possible  stimulating  effect  upon  others  who  may  care 
to  extend  them.  For  these  latter  reasons,  however,  as 
much  as  for  the  positive  inferences  I  have  drawn  from  them 
above,  I  have  felt  that  they  ought  not  to  be  unrecorded. 
Their  main  purpose  in  the  progress  and  plan  of  this  book 
is  seen  in  their  witness  to  the  regularity  of  operation  of 
the  principle  of  suggestion  or  dynamogenesis. 

1  Mrs.  C.  Ladd  Franklin,  who  wrote  to  me  kindly  about  the  papers  as  origi- 
nally published  in  Science. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

The  Origin  of  Right-handedness. 
§  I.    ExpermiejitaL 

The  question  *  Why  are  we  right-  or  left-handed  } '  has 
exercised  the  speculative  ingenuity  of  many  men.  It  has 
come  to  the  front  anew  in  recent  years,  in  view  of  the 
advances  made  in  the  general  physiology  of  the  nervous 
system ;  and  certainly  we  are  now  in  a  better  position  to 
set  the  problem  intelligently  and  to  hope  for  its  solution. 
Hitherto  the  actual  conditions  of  the  rise  of  'dextrality'  in 
young  children  —  as  the  general  fact  of  uneven-handedness 
may  be  called  —  have  not  been  closely  observed.  It  was 
to  gain  light,  therefore,  upon  the  facts  themselves  that  the 
experiments  described  in  the  following  pages  were  carried 
out. 

My  child  H.  was  placed  in  a  comfortable  sitting  posture, 
the  arms  left  bare  and  free  in  their  movement,  and  allowed 
to  reach  for  objects  placed  before  her  in  positions  exactly 
determined  and  recorded  by  the  simple  arrangement  of  slid- 
ing rods  already  described.  The  experiments  took  place  at 
the  same  hour  daily,  for  a  period  extending  from  her  fourth 
to  her  tenth  month.  These  experiments  were  planned  with 
very  great  care  and  with  especial  view  to  the  testing  of  several 
hypotheses  which,  although  superficial  to  those  who  have 
studied  physiology,  yet  constantly  recur  in  publications  on 

58 


Expert  Die) I  la  l.  59 

this  subject.^  Among  these  theories  certain  may  be  men- 
tioned with  regard  to  which  my  experiments  were  con- 
clusive. It  has  frequently  been  held  that  a  child's  right- 
handedness  arises  from  the  nurse's  or  mother's  constant 
method  of  carrying  it ;  the  child's  hand  which  is  left  free 
being  more  exercised,  and  so  becoming  stronger.  This 
theory  is  ambiguous  as  regards  both  mother  and  child. 
The  mother,  if  right-handed,  would  carry  the  child  on  the 
left  arm,  in  order  to  work  with  the  right  arm.  This  I  find 
an  invariable  tendency  with  myself  and  with  nurses  and 
mothers  whom  I  have  observed.  But  this  would  leave  the 
child's  left  arm  free,  and  so  a  right-handed  mother  would 
be  found  with  a  left-handed  child.  Again,  if  the  mother 
or  nurse  be  left-handed,  the  child  would  tend  to  be  right- 
handed.  Or  if,  as  is  the  case  in  civilized  countries,  nurses 
largely  replace  the  mothers,  it  would  be  necessary  that 
most  of  the  nurses  be  left-handed  in  order  to  make  most  of 
the  children  right-handed.  Now  none  of  these  deductions 
are  true.  Further,  the  child,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  holds  on 
with  both  hands,  however  it  is  itself  held. 

Another  theory  maintains  that  the  development  of  right- 
handedness  is  due  to  differences  in  weight  of  the  two 
lateral  halves  of  the  body ;  this  tends  to  bring  more  strain 
on  one  side  than  the  other,  and  so  to  give  more  exercise, 
and  so  more  development,  to  that  side.  This  evidently 
assumes  that  children  are  not  right-  or  left-handed  before 
they  learn  to  stand.  This  my  results  given  below  show  to 
be  false.  Again,  we  are  told  that  infants  get  right-handed 
by  being  placed  on  one  side  too  much  for  sleep ;  this  can 

1  Cf.  Vierordt's  remarks,  Physiologie  des  Kindesalters,  pp.  428,  429.  For  a 
detailed  statement  of  theories  on  this  topic,  see  Chap.  X.  of  the  very  learned 
monograph  on  The  Right  Hand :  Left-handedness,  by  my  late  lamented  col- 
league and  friend  Sir  Daniel  Wilson. 


6o 


The  Origin  of  Right-handedness, 


be  shown  to  have  little  force  also,  when  the  precaution  is 
taken  to  place  the  child  alternately  on  its  right  and  left 
sides  for  its  sleeping  periods. 

In  the  case  of  the  child  H.,  certain  precautions  were 
carefully  enforced.  She  was  never  carried  about  in  arms 
at  all,  never  walked  with  when  crying  or  sleepless  (a 
ruinous  and  needless  habit  to  cultivate  in  an  infant) ;  she 
was  frequently  turned  over  in  her  sleep ;  she  was  not 
allowed  to  balance  herself  on  her  feet  until  a  later  period 
than  that  covered  by  the  experiments.  Thus  the  condi- 
tions of  the  rise  of  the  right-handed  era  were  made  as 
simple  and  uniform  as  possible. 

The  experiments  included,  besides  reaching  for  colours, 
a  great  many  of  reaching  for  other  objects,  at  longer  and 
shorter  distances,  and  in  unsymmetrical  directions.  The 
following  table  (III.)  gives  some  details  of  the  results  of  the 
experiments  in  which  simple  objects  were  used,  extending 
over  a  period  of  four  months,  from  the  fifth  to  the  ninth  in 
her  life.  The  number  of  experiments  at  each  sitting  varied 
from  ten  to  forty;  the  position  of  the  child  being  reversed, 
as  to  light  from  windows,  position  of  observation,  etc.,  after 
half  of  each  series. 

TABLE   III. 


Date. 

No.  of 
Series. 

No.  of  Ex- 
periments. 

Right 
Hand. 

Left 
Hand. 

Both 
Hands. 

1890.  February  lOth  to  March  15th 
March  14th  to  April  14th  .  . 
April  14th  to  May  14th  .  .  . 
May  14th  to  June  19th    .  .  . 

30 
25 
25 
16 

744 

623 

546 
274 

134 

213 

57 

166 
141 
130 
131 

405 
348 
203 

86 

Total 

96 

2,187 

577 

568 

1042 

Expcrimaital. 


6i 


It  is  evident  from  Table  III.  that  no  trace  of  preference 
for  either  hand  is  discernible  during  this  period;  indeed, 
the  neutrality  is  as  complete  as  if  it  had  been  arranged 
beforehand,  or  had  followed  the  throwing  of  dice. 

I  then  conceived  the  idea  that  possibly  a  severer  dis- 
tance test  might  affect  the  result  and  show  a  marked 
preferential  response  by  one  hand  over  the  other.  I 
accordingly  continued  to  use  a  neutral  stimulus,  but  placed 
it  from  12  to  15  inches  away  from  the  child.  This 
resulted  in  very  hard  straining  on  her  part,  with  all  the 
signs  of  physical  effort  (explosive  breathing-sounds  result- 
ing from  the  setting  of  the  larynx,  rush  of  blood  to  the 
head,  seen  in  flushing  of  the  face,  etc.,  and  flow  of  urine). 
Table  IV.  gives  the  results  ;  the  number  in  each  series  was 
intentionally  made  very  small,  from  one  to  twelve,  in  order 
to  avoid  fatigue. 

TABLE   IV. 


Date. 

No.  of 
Series. 

No.  of 
Trials. 

Right 
Hand. 

Left 
Hand. 

Both 
Hands. 

1890.  May  26th  to  June  lOth 

32 

80 

74 

5 

I 

The  same  cases,  distributed  according  to  distance,  give 
us  Table  V. 

TABLE  V. 


12  Inches. 

13  Inches. 

14  Inches. 

15  Inches. 

Right  hand 

29 

10 

7)1) 

2 

Left  hand 

5 

— 

— 

Both  hands 

I 

— 

— 

— 

62 


The  Origin  of  Right-handedness. 


A  comparison  of  Tables  IV.  and  V.  with  Table  III.  shows 
a  remarkable  difference.  During  the  month  ending  June 
15th,  the  child  showed  no  decided  preference  for  either 
hand  in  reaching  straight  before  her  within  the  easy  reach- 
ing distance  of  10  inches,  but  a  slight  balance  in  favour 
of  the  left  hand ;  yet  she  was  right-handed  to  a  marked 
degree  during  the  same  period  as  regards  movements 
which  required  effort  or  strain,  such  as  grasping  for  ob- 
jects 12  to  15  inches  distant.  For  the  greater  distances, 
the  left  hand  was  used  in  only  five  cases  as  against  sev- 
enty-four cases  of  the  use  of  the  right  hand ;  and  further, 
all  these  five  cases  were  twelve-inch  distances,  the  left 
hand  being  used  absolutely  not  at  all  in  the  forty-five  cases 
at  longer  distances. 

In  order  to  test  this  further,  I  varied  the  point  of  ex- 
posure of  the  stimulus  to  the  right  or  left,  aiming  thus  to 
attract  the  hand  on  one  side  or  the  other,  and  so  to  deter- 
mine whether  the  growth  or  such  a  preference  was  limited 
to  experiences  of  convenience  in  reaching  to  adjacent  local 
objects,  etc.     The  result  appears  in  Table  VI.  :  — 

TABLE  VI. 


June  loth  to  20th. 

12  Inches. 

13  Inches. 

14  Inches. 

15  Inches. 

Hand  used. 

Deviations  from  me- 

Right. 

Left. 

dian  line  — 

2  to  6  inches  to 

left.     .     .     . 

10  cases 

15  cases 

4  cases 

—    ^ 

2  to  6  inches  to 

- 

35 

— 

right     .     .     . 

2     " 

3     " 

I      " 

—    J 

Same  conditions  with 

colour  stimulus     . 

— 

— 

— 

— 

15 

2 

Experimental.  63 

This  table  shows  that  deviation  to  the  left  in  front  of  the 
body  only  called  out  the  right  hand  to  greater  exertion, 
while  the  left  hand  fell  into  still  greater  disuse.  This 
seems  to  show  that  dextrality  is  not  derived  from  the 
experience  of  the  individual  in  using  either  hand  predomi- 
nantly for  reaching,  grasping,  holding,  etc.,  within  the 
easiest  range  of  that  hand.  The  right  hand  intruded 
regularly  upon  the  domain  of  the  left. 

Proceeding  upon  the  clew  thus  obtained,  a  clew  which 
seems  to  suggest  that  the  hand  preference  is  influenced 
by  the  eye  stimulus,  I  introduced  hand  observations  into  a 
series  of  experiments  which  I  was  making  at  that  time  on 
the  same  child's  perception  of  the  different  colours  ;  think- 
ing that  the  colour  stimulus  which  represented  the  strong- 
est inducement  to  the  child  to  reach,  might  have  the  same 
effect  in  determining  the  use  of  the  right  hand  as  the 
increased  distance  in  the  experiments  already  described. 
This  inference  is  proved  to  be  correct  by  the  results  given 
in  Table  VII.  :  — 

TABLE  VII. 

Colour  stimulus,     f  Hand Right.     Left.     Both.  \  May  23d  to 

10  to  15  inches  I  Number  of  cases  .86  2  —    i  June  19th. 

It  should  be  added  that  in  all  cases  in  which  both  hands 
are  said  to  have  been  used,  each  hand  was  called  out  with 
evident  independence  of  the  other,  both  about  the  same 
time,  and  both  carried  energetically  to  the  goal.  In  many 
other  cases  in  which  either  right  or  left  hand  is  given  in 
the  tables,  the  other  hand  also  moved,  but  in  a  subordinate 
and  aimless  way.  There  was  a  very  marked  difference 
between  the  use  of  both  hands  in  some  cases,  and  of  one 
hand  followed  by,  or  accompanied  by,  the  other  in  other 


64  The  Origin  of  Right-handedness. 

cases.  It  was  very  rare  that  the  second  hand  did  not 
thus  follow  or  accompany  the  first ;  and  this  was  extremely 
marked  in  the  violent  reaching  for  which  the  right  hand 
was  mainly  used.  This  movement  was  almost  invariably 
accompanied  by  an  objectless  and  fruitless  symmetrical 
movement  of  the  other. 

The  results  of  the  entire  series  of  experiments  on  the 
use  of  the  hands  may  be  stated  as  follows,  mainly  in  the 
words  in  which   I   reported  them   summarily  some  time 


ago 


1.  I  found  no  continued  preference  for  either  hand  as 
long  as  there  were  no  violent  muscular  exertions  made, 
(based  on  2187  systematic  experiments  in  cases  of  free 
movement  of  hands  near  the  body:  i.e.,  right  hand,  577 
cases ;  left  hand,  568  cases,  —  a  difference  of  9  cases  ; 
both  hands,  1042  cases;  the  difference  of  9  cases  being 
too  slight  to  have  any  meaning) ;  the  period  covered  being 
from  the  child's  sixth  to  her  tenth  month  inclusive. 

2.  Under  the  same  conditions,  the  tendency  to  use 
both  hands  together  was  about  double  the  tendency  to 
use  either  (seen  from  the  number  of  cases  of  the  use  of 
both  hands  in  the  statistics  given  above). 

3.  A  distinct  preference  for  the  right  hand  in  violent 
efforts  in  reaching  became  noticeable  in  the  seventh  and 
eighth  months.     Experiments  during  the  eighth  month  on 

1  Science,  XVI.,  Oct.  31,  1890;  discussed  by  James,  Science,  Nov.  8,  1890, 
by  Dr.  J.  T.  O'Connor,  Ibid.,  XVI.,  1890,  p.  331,  and  by  myself,  Ibid.,  XVI., 
Nov.  28,  1890.  The  results  are  quoted  in  full  in  A^ature,  Nov.  13,  1890,  and  in 
part  in  the  Illustrated  London  News,  ^^.u.  17,  1891.  See  discussions  of  them 
also  in  Zeitsch.  fiir  Psychologie,  II.,  1891,  p.  239;  Wilson,  The  Right  Hand : 
Left-handedness,  Y>Y>-  128-131;  Revue  Scientifique,  1891,  II.,  p.  493;  Mazel, 
Revue  Scientifique,  1892,  I.,  p.  113.  Both  writers  in  the  last-named  journal 
cite  these  experiments  wrongly  as  Wilson's. 


ExperimeiitaL  65 

this  cue  gave,  in  80  cases  :  right  hand,  74  cases  ;  left  hand, 
5  cases ;  both  hands,  i  case.  This  was  true  in  two  very 
distinct  classes  of  cases :  first,  reaching  for  objects,  neu- 
tral as  regards  colour  (newspaper,  etc.),  at  more  than  the 
reaching  distance ;  and,  second,  reaching  for  bright  col- 
ours at  any  distance.  Under  the  stimulus  of  bright  colours, 
from  %6  cases,  84  were  right-hand  cases  and  2  left-hand. 
Right-handedness  had  accordingly  developed  under  pres- 
sure of  muscular  effort  in  the  sixth  and  seventh  months, 
and  showed  itself  also  under  the  influence  of  a  strong: 
colour  stimulus  to  the  eye. 

4.  Up  to  this  time  the  child  had  not  learned  to  stand  or 
to  creep ;  hence  the  development  of  one  hand  more  than 
the  other  is  not  due  to  differences  in  weight  between  the 
two  longitudinal  halves  of  the  body.  As  she  had  not 
learned  to  speak  or  to  utter  articulate  sounds  with  much 
distinctness,  we  may  say  also  that  right-  or  Icft-handcdness 
may  develop  while  the  motor  speech  centre  is  not  yet  func- 
tioning. Further,  the  use  of  the  right  hand  is  carried 
over  to  the  left  side,  showing  that  habit  in  reaching  does 
not  determine  its  use. 

5.  In  most  cases  involving  the  marked  use  of  one  hand 
in  preference  to  the  other,  the  second  or  backward  hand 
followed  slowly  upon  the  lead  of  the  first,  in  a  way  clearly 
showing  symmetrical  innervation  of  accompanying  move- 
ments by  the  second  hand.  This  confirms  the  inference 
as  to  such  movements  drawn  from  the  phenomena  of 
mirror-writing,  etc.,  by  Fechner  and  E.  H.  Weber.^ 

^  I  do  not  find,  therefore,  that  these  experiments  warrant  the  negative  in- 
ference on  this  question  which  Miinsterberg  has  drawn  from  them :  Beilrage 
ziir  Exp.  Psych.,  Heft  IV.,  p.  197. 


66  The  Origin  of  Right-handedness, 


§  2.    Theoretical. 

I.  Some  interesting  points  arise  in  connection  with  the 
interpretation  of  these  facts.  If  it  be  true  that  the  order 
of  rise  of  mental  and  physiological  functions  is  constant, 
then  for  this  question  the  results  obtained  in  the  case 
of  one  child,  if  accurate,  would  hold  for  others  apart  from 
any  absolute  time  determination.  We  would  expect,  there- 
fore, that  these  results  would  be  confirmed  by  experiments 
on  other  children,  and  this  is  the  only  way  their  correct- 
ness can  be  tested.^ 

If,  when  tested,  they  should  be  found  correct,  they 
would  be  sufficient  answer  to  several  of  the  theories  of 
right-handedness  heretofore  urged.  The  phenomenon  can- 
not be  due,  as  I  have  said,  to  differences  in  balance  of  the 
two  sides  of  the  body,  for  it  arises  before  the  body  begins 
to  stand  erect.  It  cannot  be  due  to  experience  in  the  use 
of  either  hand,  since  it  arises  when  there  is  no  such  differ- 
ence of  experience,  and  since  the  hand  preferred  is  used, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  for  purposes  for  which  in  experience 
the  other  would  be  altogether  more  convenient.^  The  rise 
of  the  phenomenon  must  be  sought,  therefore,  in  more 
deep-going  facts  of  physiology  than  such  theories  supply. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  heredity  be  brought  to  the  aid  of 

1  Vierordt  says  concerning  such  experiments  :  "  Adequate  observations  are 
wanting  on  the  grasping  movements  of  the  infant's  left  and  right  arm  —  a 
kind  of  observation  which  would  be  of  the  first  importance  for  this  inquiry," 
Physiologie  des  Kindesalters,  p.  428;  and  Wilson:  "Only  a  prolonged  series 
of  observations,  such  as  those  by  Professor  Baldwin  already  noted,  made  at 
the  first  stage  of  life,  and  based  on  the  voluntary  and  the  unprompted  actions 
of  the  child,  can  supply  the  needful  data,"  Lefl-.kandedness,  p.  209. 

2  An  additional  point,  which  I  think  is  true,  is  that  a  right-handed  child 
learns  to  shake  hands  properly  —  using  the  more  inconvenient  hand  across 
his  body  —  more  easily  than  the  left-handed  child. 


Theoretical.  67 

these  'experience'  theories,  it  is  possible  to  claim  that,  as 
structure  is  due  to  function,  experience  of  function  must 
have  been  first  in  race  history ;  and  only  thus  could  the 
modification  in  structure  which  is  now  sufficient  to  produce 
right-handedness  in  individual  cases  have  been  brought 
about.  On  the  other  hand,  if  we  go  lower  in  the  animal 
scale  than  man,  analogies  for  the  kinds  of  experience 
which  are  urged  as  reasons  for  right-handedness  are  not 
present ;  animals  do  not  carry  their  young,  nor  pat  them 
to  sleep,  nor  do  animals  shake  hands !  It  must  therefore 
be  shown  that  animals  are  right-  or  left-handed,  or  that 
they  differ  in  some  marked  respect  in  regard  to  function, 
in  their  nervous  make-up,  from  man.  Admitting  the  need 
of  meeting  these  requirements ;  admitting  again  that  we 
have  little  evidence  that  animals  are  dextral  in  their  func- 
tions; admitting  also  the  known  results  as  to  the  control 
of  the  two  halves  of  the  muscular  system  by  the  opposite 
brain  hemispheres  respectively ;  admitting  further  that  the 
motor  speech  function  is  performed  by  the  hemisphere 
which  controls  the  stronger  side  of  the  body,  and  is  adja- 
cent to  the  motor  arm  centre  in  that  hemisphere ;  and 
admitting,  finally,  that  the  speech  function  is  one  in  which 
the  animals  have  little  share  —  all  these  admissions  lead 
us  at  once  to  the  view  that  there  is  a  fundamental  connec- 
tion between  the  rise  of  speech  and  the  rise  of  right- 
handedness.^ 

1  This  much  has  been  before  surmised  by  Mazel,  Revue  Scientijique,  1892, 
I.,  p.  113.  He  makes  no  attempt,  however,  to  account  for  the  association, 
except  by  calling  both  functions  expressive.  Mr.  F.  II.  Gushing  has  sent  me 
a  paper  on  'Manual  Concepts'  (^American  Anthropologist,  V.,  1892,  p.  289) 
in  which  he  gives  interesting  evidence  from  philology  and  race  customs  among 
various  peoples  of  the  direct  influence  of  hand  movements  upon  spoken  and 
written  language.      He  finds  evidence  that  the  Zuni  and   Roman  numeral 


68  The  Origin  of  Right-handedness, 

Looking  broadly  at  the  methods  of  nervous  and  mus- 
cular development,  and  accepting  all  the  results  of  neu- 
rology we  are  able  to  gather,  we  may  say  that  in  the 
differentiation  of  functions  in  the  animal  series  certain 
principles  may  be  recognized:  i.  The  deep-seated  vital 
functions  represent  least  nervous  differentiation,  as  is  seen 
in  the  simple  organs  known  as  the  lower  nervous  centres. 
2.  New  symmetrical  functions  give  a  differential  or  two- 
fold organic  development,  the  great  instance  of  which  is 
found  in  the  cerebral  hemispheres.  3.  New  asymmetri- 
cal or  unilateral  functions  find  their  counterpart  each  in 
one  of  three  kinds  of  nervous  adaptation :  {a)  co-ordination 
of  the  hemispheres  in  a  single  function  —  i.e.,  functions 
which  are  crippled  if  either  hemisphere  is  damaged ; 
iU)  co-ordination  of  particular  functions  in  each  hemis- 
phere^/.^., functions  which  are  not  crippled  unless  both 
hemispheres  are  damaged ;  and  {c)  co-ordination  of  par- 
ticular functions  in  one  hemisphere  only  —  i.e.,  functions 
which  are  crippled  only  if  one  selected  hemisphere  is 
damaged.     All  these  kinds  of  co-ordination  exist. 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  both  speech  and  right-handed  func- 
tion belong  under  the  last  head  of  the  last  class  —  co-ordi- 
nations of  particular  functions  in  one  hemisphere  only  — 

sounds  are  derived  from  hand  words,  and  their  numeral  graphic  signs  are 
transcribed  hand  positions.  It  would  be  interesting  also  to  inquire  how  far 
the  right  hand  is  predominant  in  gesture  and  sign  languages,  which  precede 
articulate  speech.  Gushing  points  out  that  the  left  hand  is  usually  a  passive 
instrument  which  is  manipulated  actively  by  the  right.  The  best  report  on 
sign-language  is  that  of  Mallery  in  Report  of  the  Bureau  of  Ethnology,  I.,  i88r, 
and  the  best  discussion  of  the  phenomenon  is  by  Romanes,  Ment.  Evolution 
in  Man,  pp.  104  ff.  I  have  asked  Mr.  Lester  Jones,  Fellow  of  Princeton  Col- 
lege, to  examine  Col.  Mallery's  detailed  reports  of  the  actual  signs  employed 
in  the  sign-languages  of  the  North  American  Indians,  tabulating  the  cases  in 
which  either  hand  is  used  alone  or  predominately.  I  give  Mr.  Jones'  results 
in  Appendix  B,  with  some  remarks  upon  their  value  for  our  present  inquiry. 


Theoretical.  69 

and  that  they  belong  in  the  same  hemisphere.  Why  is 
this?     What  have  they  in  common  ? 

A  very  essential  kind  of  hand  movements  are  the  so- 
called  'expressive'  movements,  meaning  those  which  serve 
to  convey  a  meaning,  or  express  a  state  of  consciousness. 
Of  course,  speech  is  par  excellence  the  function  of  expres- 
sion. It  is  further  only  a  part  of  the  position  upon  which 
the  psychological  theory  of  expression  is  based,  that  all 
movements  are  in  a  sense  expressive,  and  that  details  of 
expression  and  its  relative  fulness  are  matters  of  co-ordi- 
nation. Now,  this  co-ordination  has  attained  its  ripest  and 
most  complex  form,  apart  from  speech,iin  movements  of 
the  hand.  Upon  this  view  it  is  easy  to  hold  that  right- 
handedness  is  a  form  of  expressive  differentiation  of  move- 
ment, and  that  it  preceded  speech,  which  is  a  further  and 
more  complex  form  of  differentiation  and  adaptation. 

The  neurological  basis  upon  which  this  hypothesis  rests 
is  adequate,  and  affords  a  presumption  as  to  the  psycho- 
logical development  as  well.  The  facts  I  have  now  given 
for   the    first   time,  go    some  way  to    support   the  view : 

1.  Right-handedness  arose  before  speech  in  the  child  H. 

2.  Imitation  by  the  hand  of  movements  seen  arises  before 
articulate  imitations  of  sounds  heard ; "  this  in  spite  of  the 
fact  that  hearing,  in  its  development  in  the  child,  becomes 
perfect  before  sight.  3.  Characteristic  differences  in  chil- 
dren in  respect  to  their  general  mobility  of  arm  and  hand, 
manual  skill,  and  quickness  of  manipulation,  extend  also 
to  speech.  As  compared  with  my  other  child,  E.,  the  first- 
born, H.,  is  remarkably  agile  and  motile  generally  in  her 

^  See  physiological  evidence,  below,  pp.  422,  424. 

2  Below,  Chap.  VI.,  §  4.  It  is  interesting  that  of  both  hand  and  speech 
movements  the  latest  to  be  lost  in  disease  are  those  involved  in  the  so-called 
'  mimicry  '  of  movement  and  in  imitative  speech. 


70  The    Origin  of  Right-Jiandedness. 

temperament ;  and  her  speech  development  was  relatively- 
much  earlier  and  more  rapid. 

It  is  further  interesting  to  note  that  musical  ability  is 
associated  with  speech  ability  —  a  connection  which  would 
be  expected  when  one  takes  due  account  of  the  expressive 
character  and  function  of  music.  As  far  as  theories  of 
the  rise  of  musical  expression  have  gone,  they  unite  in 
finding  its  beginnings  in  the  rudimentary  emotional  ex- 
pressions of  the  animals.  The  singing  of  birds  is  undoubt- 
edly connected  with  their  mating  instincts.  Pathological 
cases  also  show  a  marked  connection  between  musical  exe- 
cution and  speech,  to  the  extent  that,  while  musical  defect 
almost  invariably  involves  speech  defects,  the  reverse  is 
much  less  generally  true  —  a  fact  which  confirms  the  view 
that  music  is  an  earlier  form,  but  still  a  form,  of  expressive 
reaction. 

Late  observations  also  show,  as  far  as  they  are  sufficient, 
that  the  centre  for  music  expression  is  also  located  nor- 
mally in  the  left  hemisphere  for  right-handed  persons. 
Oppenheim  reports  a  case  ^  of  total  aphasia  with  total 
amusia  (lack  of  musical  ability  from  disease)  in  which  the 
recovery  of  speech  brought  with  it  musical  recovery  also. 
Furthermore,  another  case  of  Oppenheim's  shows  motor 
aphasia  with  motor  amusia  only  —  i.e.,  the  patient  could 
still  understand  tunes,  and,  further,  could  imagine  tunes 
'  in  his  head,' 2  while  he  could  not  sing  them.  This  shows 
a  close  connection  in  locality  between  motor  speech  and 
motor  music  function,  while  a  slight  separateness  of  the 
two   centres  in  locality  in   the  left   hemisphere  explains 

1  Charite  Annaleti,  XTIL,  1888,  p.  286. 

2  Cf.  Chap.  XIV.,  below,  for  further  exposition  of  the  mechanism  of  speech 
and  the  music  function. 


Theoretical,  7 1 

cases  of  motor  aphasia  in  which  musical  execution  is  pre- 
served. Further,  Frankl-Hochwart  declares  that  no  cases 
are  recorded  of  amusia  from  lesion  in  the  right  hemis- 
phere/ and  Starr  says  of  a  patient  of  his :  ^  ''  My  patient 
is  right-handed,  and  music  does  follow  speech  in  being 
unilaterally  located ;  ...  it  is  well  proved  that  the  musi- 
cal faculty  is  one-sided  in  location."  Despite  these  posi- 
tive opinions,  however,  I  think  more  critical  cases  with 
autopsy  are  necessary  to  make  the  position  quite  secure. 

The  service  which  speech  owes  to  gesture  is  emphasized 
by  Romanes  in  the  following  words :  "  Although  gesture 
language  is  not  in  my  opinion  so  efficient  a  means  of 
developing  abstract  ideation  as  is  spoken  language,  it 
must  nevertheless  have  been  of  much  service  in  assisting 
the  growth  of  the  latter,  and  ...  in  laying  the  foundation 
of  the  whole  mental  fabric  which  has  been  constructed  by 
the  faculty  of  speech.  Whether  we  look  to  children,  to 
savages,  or,  in  a  lesser  degree,  to  idiots,  we  find  that  ges- 
ture plays  an  important  part  in  assisting  speech ;  and  in 
all  cases  where  a  vocabulary  is  scanty  or  imperfect,  ges- 
ture is  sure  to  be  employed  as  the  natural  means  of 
supplementing  speech.  .  .  .  Therefore  it  is,  in  my  opinion, 
perfectly  certain  that  its  origin  and  development  must 
have  been  assisted  by  gesture.  There  can  be  no  doubt 
that  the  reciprocal  influence  must  have  been  great  in  both 
directions,  and  that  it  must  have  proceeded  from  gesture 
to  speech  in  the  first  instance,  and  afterwards  from  speech 
to  gesture." 

^  This  means  that  all  cases  noted  have  been  right-handed.  Deutsche 
Zeitsch.  fur  Nervenheilkmide,  1891,  I.,  p.  295,  and  foot-note. 

-  In  a  private  letter.  The  case  is  referred  to  by  Starr  in  The  Psychological 
Review,  January,  1894,  p.  92. 


72  The  Origin  of  Right-handedness, 

All  this  means  simply  that  the  general  cause  to  which 
is  due  the  fact  of  right-handedness  is  also  the  cause, 
through  further  differentiation  and  emphasis  in  the  same 
local  seat,  of  the  development  of  speech  and  of  musical 
ability.  It  now  remains  to  ask :  What  was  or  is  this 
cause,  and  when  in  the  race-history  series  did  it  begin  to 
operate  ?  There  are  only  two  hypotheses  of  any  force  — 
either  that  of  '  experience,'  or  that  of  '  spontaneous  varia- 
tion '  at  some  stage  in  biological  development. 

It  is  extremely  improbable  .that  dextrality  should  have 
arisen  among  the  quadrupeds,  or  amanous  bipeds,  for 
experience  was  lacking  of  unilateral  stimulation,  and  a 
spontaneous  variation  of  this  kind  would  have  produced 
such  inconvenience  of  locomotion  and  ultimately  such 
asymmetry  of  form  that  it  would  have  been  weeded  out.^ 
As  an  extreme  example,  fancy  a  bird  become  dextral  in  its 
flight.2 

As  soon  as  we  come  to  bipeds  with  hands,  however, 
these  reasons  do  not  hold.  Their  locomotion  does  not 
depend  on  manual  symmetry,  and  any  dextrality,  however 
slight,  would  be  of  direct  advantage  in  climbing,  fighting, 
breaking  sticks,  and  pulling  fruit ;  since  a  disproportionate 
growth  of  one  side  would  give  that  side  greater  strength 
than  either  side  would  possess  in  animals  of  symmetrical 
development  in  the  same  environment.  A  very  strong 
one-armed  man  can  keep  at  bay  a  weaker  man  with  two 
arms,  or  destroy  him  ;  and  this  is  emphasized  in  animals, 
where  brute  force  is  the  only  resource.     It  is  difficult  to 

1  For  this  reason  the  human  leg,  as  Brown-Sequard  says,  is  not  as  one- 
sided as  the  arm.  Any  great  unevenness  would  produce  lameness  and  relative 
incapacity. 

2  The  only  evidence  I  know  of  such  a  thing  is  that  a  cat  swims  in  a  circle; 
but  then  dogs  and  horses  do  not,  and  these  do  not  drown,  while  the  cat  does. 


i 


Theoretical.  73 

find,  however,  in  the  habits  of  simians  any  ground  for 
beHeving  that  there  has  been  a  form  of  unilateral  stimula- 
tion which  would  act  to  effect  a  structural  change  in  one 
hemisphere  over  and  above  the  other.  This,  rather  than 
the  anatomical  causes  suggested  by  Romanes,  may  be 
the  reason  that  the  animals  have  not  developed  speech. 
Their  conditions  of  life  stimulation  are  such  that  there 
has  been  no  chance  for  the  development  of  the  centre 
for  *  expression '  in  the  left  temporal  brain-lobe.  They 
have  been  compelled  to  maintain  bilateral  balance  of 
function. 

But,  apart  from  this,  there  is  every  reason  to  expect, 
quite  independently  of  function,  that  two  organs  of  such 
comparative  separateness  and  independence  of  function 
as  the  two  hemispheres  would  not  remain  exactly  balanced 
in  function ;  in  short,  spontaneous  variations  giving  advan- 
tageous dextrality  would  inevitably  arise  and  persist  as 
soon  as  the  habits  of  life  were  not  such  that  more  impor- 
tant functions,  such  as  locomotion,  tended  to  suppress  them 
and  restore  bilateral  equilibrium.^  There  are,  as  far  as  I 
know,  very  few  published  observations  of  fact  in  regard 
to  simian  or  animal  dextrality.^ 

1  It  is  on  this  point  that  I  differ  from  Wilson,  who  claims  that,  while  some 
are  naturally  right-  or  left-handed,  most  people  owe  the  peculiarity  to  educa- 
tion; the  evidence  against  Wilson's  view,  apart  from  my  present  results,  is 
well  put  by  Mazel,  loc.  cit. 

2  I  know  only  the  assertion  of  Vierordt  that  parrots  grasp  and  hold  food 
with  the  left  claw,  that  lions  strike  with  the  left  paw,  and  his  quotation  from 
Livingstone  — '  All  animals  are  left-handed '  (Vierordt,  loc.  cit.,  p.  428). 
Dr.  W.  Ogle  reports  observations  on  parrots  and  monkeys  in  Trans.  Royal 
Med.  and  Chirur.  Society,  187 1.  Dr.  Ogle  informs  me  in  a  private  letter  that 
the  chimpanzee  which  recently  died  in  the  Zoological  Garden  in  London  was 
discovered  by  him  to  be  left-handed.  I  have  addressed  a  circular  letter  to 
some  of  the  officials  in  zoological  institutions  here  and  abroad,  and  hope  to 


74  The  Origin  of  Right-handedness, 

It  is  likely,  therefore,  that  right-handedness  in  the  child 
is  due  to  differences  in  the  two  half-brains,  reached  at  an 
early  stage  in  life,  that  the  promise  of  it  is  inherited,  and 
that  the  influences  of  infancy  have  little  effect  upon  it. 
Yet,  of  course,  regular  habits  of  disuse  or  of  the  cultiva- 
tion of  the  other  hand  may,  as  the  child  grows  up, 
diminish  or  destroy  the  disparity  between  the  two.  And 
this  inherited  brain-onesidedness  also  accounts  for  the 
association  of  right-handedness,  speech,  and  music  faculty, 
the  speech  function  being  a  further  development  of  the 
same  unilateral  power  of  movement  found  first  in  right- 
or  left-handedness. 

II.  A  further  point  of  psychological  interpretation  is  of 
some  interest.  How  are  we  to  account  for  the  fact  that 
a  bright  colour  stimulus  exposed  at  a  lesser  distance 
brought  out  the  right  hand,  while  a  neutral  stimulus 
required   a   greater   distance } 

The  general  fact  may  be  expressed  in  the  symbols  of 
the    formula   which    I    have    proposed   for   the    so-called 

gather  some  facts  in  this  way.  If  it  should  prove  true  that  the  lower  animals 
are  left-sided,  then  the  current  view  that  right-handed  children  have  a  pre- 
liminary period  of  left-handedness  —  a  view  to  which  my  Table  III.,  above, 
gives  some  support  —  might  have  its  explanation  in  the  hypothesis  of  the  repe- 
tition of  phylogenetic  development  in  the  individual  child. 

It  is  evident  that  on  this  theory  of  spontaneous  variation  any  change 
which  produced  a  permanent  organic  superiority  of  one  hemisphere  \\'Ould 
be  sufficient,  and  the  view  that  the  difference  in  the  hemispheres  is  due  to 
a  better  blood  supply  to  the  left  hemisphere  might  thus  have  its  justification. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  arterial  arrangements  do  seem  to  indicate  a  more 
direct  blood  supply  to  the  left  hemisphere  (cf.  the  note  of  Dr.  J.  T.  O'Connor, 
apropos  of  my  experiments,  in  Science,  XVI.,  1890,  p.  331).  It  is  an  interest- 
ing inquiry  whether  this  arterial  arrangement  is  reversed  in  left-handed  per- 
sons. Wilson  cites  two  cases  in  which  there  was  no  such  correspondence 
{lac.  cit,,  p.  179). 


Theoretical. 


75 


dynamogenic  method  of  experimentation.  It  will  be  re- 
membered that  in  the  formula  ^ 

D  represented  the  drawing-out  tendency,  the  amount  of 
dynamogeny  exercised  by  a  given  stimulus;  q  the  quality 
of  this  stimulus  (colour,  etc.);  and  d  the  distance.  If 
the  tendency  to  use  one  particular  hand  in  preference  to 
the  other  hand  be  designated  by  r,  we  now  find  from  the 
experiments  that 

7'=fC'd,  (i) 

but,  by  the  general  law  that  distance  decreases  influence. 


z,„.i, 

(2) 

consequently,                    r=K  -  — • 

(3) 

Again,  we  find  from  the  experiments  that 

I 

^  (colour) 

(4) 

but                                        D  —  iC'q\ 

(5) 

consequently,                    r=K'jy 

(6) 

the  same  result  as  (3). 

So  it  seems  from  both  results  of  the  experiments  that 
right-handedness  varies  inversely  as  the  dy?iamogenic  inflii- 
e7ice  of  the  stimuhis,  whether  that  dynamogenic  influence 
be  colour  or  distance. 

The  question  of  interpretation,  then,  is  this  :  How  does 
it   come  that   increasing   distance,   which   would  be  sup- 

1  Above,  Chap.  II.,  §  3. 


76  The  Origin  of  Right-handedness. 

posed  to  lessen  the  calling-out  force  of  a  stimulus  by 
lessening  its  intensity,  clearness,  etc.,  yet  tends  to  do 
exactly  what  a  bright  colour  at  a  lesser  distance  does,  i.e., 
to  call  out  increased  dynamogeny,  with  the  use  of  the 
right  hand? 

Of  course  the  explanation  is  evident  enough.  The  child 
has  learned  by  experience,  or  has  inherited  an  organic 
experience,  that  more  effort,  higher  D,  is  necessary  in  the 
case  of  a  more  distant  stimulus ;  and  so  a  central  supply 
goes  out  to  reinforce  the  influence  D  of  this  distant 
stimulus,  and  the  right-handedness  is  the  evidence  of 
this  reinforced  D.  We  would  expect,  on  the  other  hand, 
that  the  colour,  being  itself  a  more  dynamogenic  stimu- 
lus, would  have  the  same  effect,  without  the  central  rein- 
forcement, and  also  bring  out  the  right  hand.^  And  so  it 
does. 

A  farther  point  of  interest  is  seen  in  the  inhibition  of 
the  movement  altogether  when  the  distance  is  slightly 
increased,  i.e.,  to  fifteen  inches  or  over,  as  given  in  the 
tables.  It  shows  that  even  at  the  age  of  this  child  very 
accurate  visual  estimation  of  distance  has  already  been 
acquired,  as  I  had  occasion  to  say  in  the  last  chapter. 
The  child's  interpretation  of  the  distance  inhibits  all 
effort  to  reach  across  it.  The  interpretations  undoubtedly 
result,   in   the   case    of   the    child,    in    my  opinion,    from 

1  On  this  point,  Professor  William  James  writes  {^Scioice,  Nov.  14,  1890, 
p.  295),  apropos  oi  my  experiments  when  first  announced  :  "  These  observa- 
tions seem  very  interesting,  as  showing  how  strong  (attractive)  stimuli  may  pro- 
duce more  definitely  localized  reactions  than  weaker  ones.  The  baby  grasped 
at  bright  colours  with  the  right  hand  almost  exclusively."  I  find  this  but 
natural,  not  because  the  reaction  is  *  more  definitely  localized,'  but  because 
that  is  an  incident  to  a  larger  and  more  massive  discharge  through  the  particu- 
lar channel  which  is  ready  for  it. 


Theoretical.  77 

associations  of  visual  indications  of  distance  with  sensa- 
tions of  hand  and  arm  movement.  And  I  find  that 
this  association  gives  rise  to  three  determinations  —  all 
matters  of  experience  and  all  becoming  remarkably  re- 
fined—  (i)  the  safe-reacJiiiig  distance  {\\s(i  of  either  hand 
or  both);  (2)  the  iinccrtain-rcacJiing  distance  {\\^q.  of  right 
hand);  and  (3)  the  impossible-to-reacJi  distance  (no  hand 
movement,  but  a  turning  away  of  face  and  body). 

The  process  of  learning  this  lesson  in  distance,  and  with 
it  the  waxing  ability  of  the  stronger  hand,  is  so  graphically 
described  by  James  in  a  private  letter  that  I  quote  it,  with 
his  permission :  "  Admitting  the  experience  hypothesis 
(which  I  adopt  from  you  now,^  since  I  have  made  no  ob- 
servations, and  your  sense  of  what  is  likely  in  this  regard 
seems  to  me  to  have  great  weight),  the  way  I  represent 
the  matter  to  myself  is  thus :  The  child  originally  re- 
sponds to  all  optical   excitements  which  strike  his  atten- 

1  In  view  of  my  letter  in  Science,  Nov.  28,  1890,  p.  302.  He  adds,  how- 
ever, after  the  above  quotation :  "  Although  I  have  made  every  possible  con- 
cession to  the  experience  theory,  as  adopted  by  you,  I  must  say  that  the  notion 
of  a  specialized  native  impulsiveness  for  the  right  hand  when  certain  distances 
appeal  to  the  eye  lingers  in  my  mind  as  that  of  a  natural  possibility."  This 
is  refuted,  I  think,  by  the  fact  that  infants  at  first  'grasp  at  the  moon'  with 
either  hand  indiscriminately,  the  '  moon  '  standing  for  any  object  at  any  dis- 
tance. The  possibility  of  such  native  adaptations  cannot  be  doubted,  for 
some  young  animals  seem  to  have  different  native  responses  adjusted  to 
different  distances;  but  in  the  case  of  the  child,  experience  seems  to  be  waited 
for  to  develop  many  things  which  are  really  native. 

I  endeavoured  to  test  H.'s  native  sense  of  locality  on  the  body,  apart 
from  the  association  with  sight,  by  dangling  my  watch-chain  gently  from  day 
to  day  on  the  top  of  her  head,  and  by  gently  pinching  one  or  other  of  her 
ears  occasionally,  watching  the  movements  of  her  hands  in  their  search  for 
the  chain  and  the  ear.  Up  to  about  the  middle  of  her  third  month  the  hand 
movements  seemed  perfectly  random,  '  up '  and  '  back  '  being  about  the  only 
tendencies  which  indicated  any  sense  of  locality  whatever.  In  the  third 
month,  however,  she  seemed  to  begin  to  learn  where  to  find  the  objects, 
especially  the  ear;   but  the  success  was  apparently  due  to  the  experience. 


78  The  Origin  of  Right-handedness. 

tion  by  bounding  up  and  down,  and  moving  both  arms. 
Ere  long  the  movement  becomes  one  of  grasping  with 
both.  Some  graspings  prove  easy,  and  the  original  bi- 
lateral medianism  continues  for  a  while  associated  with 
these.  Others  are  protracted ;  and  the  superior  native 
efficiency  of  the  right  hand,  in  reaching  the  goal,  here 
acts  so  as  to  inhibit  the  left  hand  altogether  when  the 
stimulus  suggests  a  case  of  this  kind.  Others,  again, 
never  succeed,  the  object  being  beyond  range  altogether; 
and  all  movements  are  inhibited  for  these  at  last." 

Now,  the  point  to  be  observed  is  this,  that  the  dynamo- 
genie  effect  of  distance  {d  in  the  formula)  is  not  natively 
provided  for,  as  is  that  of  quality  (^,  colour  in  this  case) : 
it  is  an  acquired  effect,  called  out  through  experiences  of 
relative  distance.  Relative  distances  are  *  interpreted '  in 
terms  of  past  experience,  and  this  gives  them  their  pres- 
ent force.  The  course  of  the  nervous  disturbance  is 
through  the  higher  circuit  which  association  involves,  and 
which  on  the  motor  side  implicates  attention ;  while  the 
dynamogenic  effect  of  colour  or  of  sensation  qualities 
generally,  which  prompt  native  reactions,  is  by  a  lower 
reflex  circuit.  One  is  an  ideo-motor  reaction,  based  on 
association ;  the  other  is  a  native  sensori-motor  reaction. 

It  is  necessary,  therefore,  again  to  alter  profoundly  our 
conception  of  the  simplest  dynamogenic  formula  in  view 
of  the  element  of  association  in  the  simplest  reaction  in- 
volving distance.  And  it  is  easy  to  see  what  becomes  of 
the  formula  as  soon  as  association  gets  to  be  a  little  com- 
plex :  for  d,  we  must  substitute  a  symbol  to  stand  for  the 
central  influence  as  a  whole,  say  <^ ;  and  of  course  with 
increasing  complexity  of  experience  the  meaning  of  ^ 
becomes  more  and  more   recondite.     With   adults,  there- 


Theoretical.  79 

fore,  such  a  formula  would  be  in  most  cases  nothing  more 
than  tautology.^     With  infants  it  remains  useful  only  for 

1  The  only  way  to  experiment  on  volition,  accordingly,  is  by  using  com- 
parative stimulations  of  no  meaning  or  association,  or  by  keeping  the  associa- 
tion element  constant,  by  using  the  same  stimulation  repeatedly.  I  have 
endeavoured  to  experiment  on  volition  by  observing  the  effect  on  action  of  the 
same  stimulation  apprehended  through  different  senses,  i.e.^  the  tendency  to 
draw  a  figure  seen  in  one  case  and  traced  by  the  hand  in  the  other  {^Proc.  Cong. 
Exper.  Psych.,  London,  1892,  p.  51);   see  also  below.  Chap.  XIII.,  §  3. 

A  further  point  deserves  a  word.  In  the  original  announcement  of  these 
experiments  I  found  it  necessary  to  think  that  the  child's  reaching  with  the 
right  hand  only  in  cases  involving  long  distances  and  effort  could  not  be  ex- 
plained without  supposing  that  her  sense  of  motor  discharge  in  the  case  of 
effort  was  something  different  from  that  in  case  of  movements  without  effort, 
i.e.,  that  there  was  a  central  sense  of  motor  potential  of  some  kind.  Profes- 
sor James  in  Science  and  in  private  letters,  and  Professor  Dewey  later  in  a 
private  letter,  suggest  that  the  child  might  be  guided  by  its  sense  of  greater 
success,  skill,  ease,  etc.,  in  the  case  of  earlier  right-hand  movements  —  all 
peripheral,  not  central,  elements.  I  am  not  strenuous  for  my  interpretation; 
indeed  the  other  seems  to  me  now  more  natural  and  simple.  It  is  to  be  hoped 
that  more  experiments  will  be  forthcoming;  but  with  my  experience  with  both 
my  children  I  find  certain  facts  which  I  cannot  explain  on  the  peripheral  view: 
(i)  The  child  does  wc?/ show  differences  of  ease,  skill,  etc.,  in  favour  of  either 
hand  at  this  early  age,  as  far  as  can  be  detected;  (2)  after  beginning  to  use 
the  right  hand  for  strenuous  efforts  the  two  hands  are  still  used  indiscrimi- 
nately for  easy  movements,  near  distances,  etc.  How  can  this  be  explained? 
Why  should  not  the  child  economize  —  as  adults  do  —  in  all  movements,  using 
the  right  hand  after  experience  of  its  'greater  efficiency'  for  everything,  when 
circumstances  permit?  The  view  of  Professor  James  seems  to  require  what 
I  may  call  a  *  cat  and  kitten  '  arrangement  of  nervous  discharges,  i.e.,  certain 
l^athways  of  voluminous  discharge  for  right-hand  movements  opened  up  by 
earlier  more  successful  movements,  and,  at  the  same  time,  other  pathwaysyjjr 
the  same  discharges  \i\\^Xi\t%'S>  voluminous  —  not  due  to  the  earlier  successful 
movements.  We  have  not  knowledge  enough  to  say  it  may  not  be;  but  it 
looks  to  me  like  a  Marge  hole  for  the  cat  and  a  little  hole  for  the  kitten'  — 
an  arrangement  which  Professor  James  argues  against,  at  least  in  one  con- 
nection {Princ.  of  Psychology,  Vol.  I.,  p.  592).  But  that  the  child  does  ex- 
tend the  use  of  the  right  hand,  even  when  circumstances  would  seem  to  dis- 
courage it,  is  seen  in,  (3),  the  very  striking  fact,  that  the  right  hand  is  used 
to  grasp  objects,  etc.,  which  lie  on  the  left  side  of  the  child  ;  movements  in  which 
the  left  hand  would  seem  to  have  actually  more  skill,  ease,  and  practice. 
Professor  Ladd  seems  to  accept  my  first  interpretation  (^Psychology,  Descriptive 
and  Explanatory,  p.  222). 


8o  The  Origin  of  Right-handedness. 

such  elementary  experiences  as  those  I  have  enumerated 
above. 

Again,  as  at  the  end  of  the  last  chapter,  I  must  call 
attention  not  only  to  the  complication  which  these  experi- 
ments give  to  the  method  of  studying  children,  but  also  to 
the  fine  uniformity  which  appears  through  them  in  the 
working  of  the  law  of  dynamogenesis,  upon  which  rests  the 
theory  of  development  stated  in  the  following  chapters. 


CHAPTER   V. 

Infants'  Movements. 
§  I.    Descriptive ;   Tracery  Imitation. 

In  earlier  chapters,  the  general  conditions  of  infant's 
responses  in  mov^ement  have  been  pointed  out  and  some 
special  problems  set :  a  few  points  of  interest  may  now  be 
further  brought  up  in  connection  with  the  rise  of  the  more 
complex  movements. 

From  the  beginning  of  independent  life,  movement  is 
the  infant's  natural  response  to  all  influences.  And,  more 
than  this.  Bain  and  Preyer  seem  to  have  made  out  their 
case,  that  from  the  outset  there  are  movements  which  are 
spontaneous,  due  to  discharge  of  the  motor  centres  unso- 
licited by  definite  external  stimulations.  At  any  rate,  no 
observation  made  after  birth  can  decide  the  question  one 
way  or  the  other  whether  sensation  or  movement  is  the 
earlier  fact  in  ontogenetic  development.  It  remains  for 
the  embryologists  to  continue  their  work,  and  this  is 
where  Preyer's  results  get  their  principal  value. 

Reflexes.  —  In  regard  to  movements  more  properly  reflex 
and  responsive,  I  may  record  a  few  detached  observations 
on  my  child.  Carefully  planned  experiments  with  her, 
made  in  the  ninth  month,  showed  the  native  walking 
reflex — alternative  movement  of  the  legs — very  strongly 
G  8x 


82  Infants    Movements. 

marked.  I  held  her  by  the  body,  having  made  the  legs 
quite  free,  in  a  position  which  allowed  the  bare  feet  to 
rest  lightly  upon  a  smooth  table.  The  reflex  seemed  to 
come  somewhat  suddenly,  for  up  to  the  middle  of  the 
eighth  month  I  could  not  discover  more  than  a  single 
alternation  ;  and  this  I  had  determined  not  to  take  as  evi- 
dence, since  it  might  well  arise  by  chance.  But,  in  the 
ninth  month,  I  observed  as  many  as  three  and  four  well- 
regulated  alternations,  in  succession.  At  first  most  of 
these  movements  were  the  reverse  of  the  natural  walking 
movements,  being  oftenest  such  as  would  carry  the  child 
backward.  This,  however,  passed  away.  I  have  the  fol- 
lowing note  on  June  13,  1890,  the  child  being  one  day 
short  of  nine  months  old  :  "  Walking  movements,  3  to  4 
alternations,  backwards  oftenest,  but  tending  rapidly  to 
forward  movements  ;  later,  2  experiments,  each  showing  3 
to  4  alternations  forwards  very  plainly  ;"  and  on  June  19  : 
*' Fine  activity  in  walking  reflex  —  good  alternations,  but 
more  backwards  than  forwards  —  clearly  reflex,  from  stim- 
ulus to  the  soles."  It  is  easy  to  see  that  this  backward 
alternation  ^  might  be  due  to  some  accident  of  stimulation 
or  discharge  when  the  reflex  was  first  called  out ;  a  ten- 
dency which  early  efforts  at  creeping  would  soon  correct. 
Yet  in  H.'s  case,  it  was  so  marked  that  for  a  period  she 
preferred  to  creep  backward. ^ 

A   few    observations .  were    made   also   upon  unilateral 

1  Two  other  cases  of  this  have  been  verbally  reported  to  me  ;  but  I  am  not 
sure  of  the  conditions  under  which  one  of  them  was  observed.  The  second 
exact  observation  I  owe  to  Professor  Cattell. 

2  For  interesting  experiments  on  the  method  and  variations  of  walking  by 
different  children  of  both  sexes  and  by  adults,  see  H.  Vierordt,  Der  Gang  des 
Me7ischen  (Tubingen,  1881).  Similar  valuable  observations  might  be  made 
by  measurements  of  the  intervals,  directions,  etc.,  of  children's  footprints  in 
the  damp  yielding  sand  of  the  seashore. 


Descriptive.  ^t^ 

reflexes.^  A  gentle  touch  with  linger  or  feather  on  the 
cheek,  or  beside  the  nose,  or  upon  the  ear,  when  H.  was 
sleeping  quietly  upon  her  back,  called  out  always  the  hand 
on  the  same  side.  After  two  or  three  such  irritations, 
her  sleep  became  troubled  and  she  turned  upon  the  bed, 
or  used  both  hands  to  rub  the  place  stimulated.  Tickling 
of  the  sole  of  the  foot  also,  besides  causing  a  reaction  in  the 
same  foot,  tended  to  bring  about  a  movement  of  the  hand 
on  the  same  side.  These  observations,  not  a  large  number, 
were  made  in  the  sixth,  seventh,  and  eighth  months. 

In  order  to  test  the  growth  of  voluntary  control  over 
the  muscles  of  the  hand  and  fingers,  I  determined  to 
observe  the  phenomena  of  H.'s  attempts  at  drawing  and 
writing,  for  which  she  showed  great  fondness  as  soon  as 
imitation  was  well  fixed.  Selecting  a  few  objects  well 
differentiated  in  outline,  —  animals  which  she  had  already 
learned  to  recognize  and  name  after  a  fashion, —  I  drew 
them  one  by  one  on  paper  and  let  her  imitate  the  ^copy.' 
The  results  I  have  in  a  series  of  '  drawings '  of  hers,  ex- 
tending from  the  last  week  of  her  nineteenth  month  to 
the  middle  of  the  twenty-seventh  month.  The  results 
show  that,  with  this  child,  up  to  the  beginning  of  the 
twenty-seventh  month  there  was  no  connection  apparent 
between  a  mental  picture  in  consciousness  and  the  move- 
ments made  by  the  hands  and  fingers  in  attempting  to 
draw  it.  The  '  drawing '  was  simply  the  vaguest  and  most 
general  imitation  of  the  teacher's  movements,  not  the 
tracing  of  a  mental  picture.  And  the  attempt  was  no 
better  when  a  'copy '  was  made  by  myself  on  the  paper  — 

1  Cf.  Kussmaul,  Untersuchungen  zur  Seelenlehcji  der  Neiigebornen  Afcnsche7i^ 
p.  1 8,  for  similar  experiments  ;  and  Vierordt,  in  Gerhardes  Ilandbuch  der 
Kinder krankheilen^  I.,  p.  215. 


84 


Infants    Move  merits. 


a  rough  outline  drawing  of  a  man,  etc.  There  was  no 
semblance  of  conformity  between  the  child's  drawing  and 
the  copy.  Further,  while  she  could  identify  the  copy  and 
name  the  animal,  she  could  not  identify  her  own  effort, 
except  so  far  as  she  remembered  what  object  she  set  out 
to  make.  See  Figures  I.,  II.,  III.,  and  IV.,  for  speci- 
mens illustrating  the  straightness  and  rigidity  of  her  early 
attempts. 


Man :   19th  month. 


W^^ 


Cat:  10th  month.  Man:  20th  month. 

Fig.  I.  — Early  Drawings  with  Copy. 


Man:  20th  month.  Bird:  20th  month. 

Fig.  II.  — Early  Drawings  without  Copy. 

With  it  all  there  was  on  her  face  an  expression  of  dis- 
satisfaction with  her  later  attempts,  similar  to  that  which 
one  observes  in  the  efforts  of  the  year-old  to  speak.  My 
little  girl  would  hide  her  head  after  making  a  drawing, 
extend  the  pencil  to  me,  and  say,  'Papa  make  man.'  It 
seemed  to  indicate  a  sense  of  what  was  expected  beyond 
the  ability  to  attain  the  process  of  accomplishing  it. 


Tracery  Iviiiation, 


In  Figs.  III.  and  IV.  we  see  some  growth  in  variety  of 
shape  and  direction  with  increased  mobiUty  of  the  hand 
and  arm,  but  still  no  imitation  in  outline  is  apparent. 


c   Horse. 


b.  Cat.  d.   Cow. 

Fig.  III. —  Drawings  without  Copy:  End  of  25TH  Month. 


\\^ 


a.  Man  (two  trials)-  b-   Bird. 

Fig.  IV.  — With  Copy:  Early  in  26TH  Month. 

Fig.  V.  shows  further  complications  in  movement. 


a,   Man  :  with  copy.  b.    Man  :  without  copy. 

Fig.  v.  — Later  more  Complicated  Drawings. 


86  Infants    Movements. 

In  the  nature  of  the  movements  which  the  child  made 
in  this  series  of  drawings,  there  is  marked  change  and 
development  which  may  be  briefly  described.  There  is 
growth  from  angular  straight  lines  to  curves,  from  move- 
ments one  way  exclusively  to  reverse  movements,  and  an 
increasing  tendency  to  complex  intricate  figures,  which 
last  probably  results  from  greatly  increased  ease,  variety, 
and  rapidity  of  movement.  At  first  she  made  only  sweep- 
ing '  arm  movements,'  then  began  to  flex  the  wrist  some- 
what, and  toward  the  end  of  the  series  given  above,  as  is 
evident  in  the  figures,  with  no  teaching,  manipulated  the 
pencil  with  her  fingers  considerably.  This  seems  to  give 
support  to  the  opinion  of  professional  writing-teachers 
that  the  *  arm  movement '  is  most  natural  and  effective  for 
purposes  of  penmanship. 

Further,  all  her  curves  were  made  by  movements  from 
left  to  right  going  upward  and  from  right  to  left  down- 
ward, like  the  movements  of  the  hands  of  a  clock  (see  the 
arrow-heads  in  Fig.  V.  a).  This  is  the  method  of  our 
usual  writing  as  contrasted  with  'back-hand.'  She  also 
preferred  lateral  to  vertical  movements  on  the  paper.  Her 
most  frequent  and  easy  '  drawing  '  consisted  of  a  series  of 
rapid  right  and  left  strokes  almost  parallel  to  one  another, 
constituting  very  narrow  and  long  loops. 

But  early  in  the  twenty-seventh  month  a  change  came. 
I  drew  a  rough  human  figure,  naming  the  parts  in  succes- 
sion as  they  were  made :  she  suddenly  seemed  to  catch 
the  idea  of  tracing  each  part,  and  she  now  for  the  first 
time  began  to  make  figures  with  vertical  and  horizontal 
proportion ;  i.e.,  she  followed  the  order  she  saw  me  take : 
'  head  '  (circle),  *  body  '  (ellipse)  below,  '  legs  '  (two  straight 
lines)  further  below,  *  hands '  (two  lines)  at  the  sides  of 


Traccjy  Imitation.  Sy 

the  body.  It  was  all  done  in  the  crudest  fashion,  as 
would  be  expected  from  the  lack  of  muscular  co-ordina- 
tion. But  the  fact  was  unmistakable  that  with  the  sim- 
plification of  the  figure  by  breaking  it  up  into  parts  had 
come  also  the  idea  of  tracery  imitation^  and  its  imperfect 
execution.  By  the  '  idea '  of  tracery  imitation,  I  mean 
the  sense  of  connection  between  what  was  visually  in  her 
own  consciousness  and  the  movement  of  her  own  hand 
or  pencil.  The  visual  pictures  or  copies  had  been  there 
in  all  her  previous  trials,  and  so  had  the  hand  move- 
ments, both  the  sight  of  them  and  the  muscular  sensations  ; 
but  there  had  been  no  sense  of  a  connection  between 
them  and  agreement  in  the  result  when  they  were  com- 
pared. 

As  yet,  however,  it  was  limited  to  two  or  three  copies  — 
objects  which  she  saw  me  make.  That  it  was  now  not 
simply  imitation  of  my  movements  is  evident  from  the 
fact  that  she  did  not  imitate  my  movements :  she  looked 
intently  upon  the  figure  which  I  made,  not  at  my  move- 
ments, and  then  strove  to  imitate  the  figure  with  move- 
ments of  her  own  very  different  from  mine.  But  she  had 
not  generalized  the  idea  away  from  particular  figures,  for 
she  could  not  trace  at  all  an  altogether  new  figure  in  right 
lines.  Further,  she  traced  these  particular  figures  just 
as  well  without  written  copies  before  her :  here,  tJierefore, 
is  the  rise  of  the  tracery  imitation  of  the  chilcV s  ozvn  vicntal 
pictiLve  —  a  fact  of  great  theoretical  interest. 

Fig.  VI.  reproduces  the  first  successful  imitation  of 
a  visual  copy,  the  copy  which  she  imitated  being  also 
given. 

Figs.  VII.  and  VIII.  show  further  development  in  free- 
dom and  complication. 


88 


Infants    Movements. 


A  curious  phenomenon,  which  has  been  noticed  also  by 
Passy^  in  the  drawings  of  much  older  children,  was  evident 
in  H.'s  attempts  to  extend  her  drawings  to  other  objects. 
This  is  the  tendency  to  neglect  the  new  object  or  copy  and 


a.   Copy.  b.   Drawing:   l.head;  2,  body;  3,  4,  legs  ;  5,  6,  arms 

(all  in  the  order  in  which  they  were  made). 

Fig,  VI.  —  First  Successful  Tracery  Imitation  :  Dec.  8, 1891  (Last  Week 
OF  27TH  Month). 

substitute  for  it  in  whole  or  part  some  drawing  which  she 
had  already  learned  to  make.  For  example,  having  ana- 
lyzed man  after  me  into  head,  body,  legs,  and  arms,  this 

1  Revue  Philosophique,  December,  1891,  p.  614. 


Tracery  Iviitation, 


89 


became  her  scheme  for  drawing  all  other  creatures.  When 
told  to  draw  a  bird  after  a  copy  set  before  her,  she  gave  it 
all  these  features,  conforming  them  in  a  measure  to  the 
general  shape  of  a  bird,  but  putting  two  strokes  at  the 


a.   With  copy.  b.   Without  copy. 

Fig.  VII.  — Man:  Dec.  13,  1891  (Last  Day  of  27TH  Month). 

sides  for  arms.  I  shall  say  more  about  this  fact  in  the 
next  section  in  discussing  the  origin  of  handwriting ;  it  is 
also  suggestive  in  connection  with  the  rise  of  the  general 
notion.^ 

1  See  below,  Chap.  XI.,  §  i. 


90 


Infants    Movements. 


The  differences  to  be  seen  by  comparing  a.  and  b.  in 
each  of  the  Figs.  VI.  and  VIII.  show  the  degree  in  which 


a.  With  copy. 


b.  Without  copy. 


Fig.  VIII.  — Late  Drawings:  Man  (28TH  Month).  The  Words  written 
IN  Figs.  VII. a.  and  VIII. b.  are  from  ihe  Child's  own  Utterances, 
taken  down  at  the  Time,  as  she  drew  the  Several  Parts.  The 
apparent  facial  outline  in  a.  of  this  figure  is,  I  think,  purely 

ACCIDENTAL. 


Interpretation  of  Tracery  Iniitatiou.  91 

the  child  was  still  dependent  upon  the  external  visual  copy 
for  the  control  of  her  imitation  tracings.  She  copied  her 
memory  picture,  at  least  when  she  had  no  external  copy ; 
but  she  controlled  the  reproduction  by  the  copy,  when  she 
had  it. 

§  2.    Interpretation  of    Tracery   Imitation:  the  Origin   of 
Handwriting. 

It  is  easily  seen  that  the  fact  to  which  I  have  given  the 
name  '  tracery  imitation '  lies  at  the  basis  of  handwriting. 
It  is  clear  that  handwriting  is  acquired  by  imitation  of 
a  copy.  Each  letter  is  acquired  by  the  tracing  out  of  a 
form  put  before  the  child.  There  are  two  very  distinct 
steps,  however,  in  the  acquisition  of  handwriting,  the  first 
of  which  is  tracery  imitation  of  an  external  copy ;  and  the 
second  is  the  similar  imitation  of  a  memory  picture  or 
form.  The  relation  of  these  two  things  to  each  other 
and,  with  that,  the  general  theory  of  handwriting,  requires 
farther  analysis.  I  shall  depict  in  some  detail  the  pro- 
gress of  this  function,  since  it  serves  to  illustrate  the  gen- 
eral theory  of  the  development  of  muscular  control  worked 
out  in  a  later  chapter. 

The  preliminary  question  as  to  how  the  child  gets  its 
visual  apprehension  of  form  may  be  answered,  and  has 
been,  in  two  ways.  Some  hold  that  the  actual  form  or 
arrangement  of  the  retinal  elements  stimulated  by  the 
rays  of  light  from  the  object  seen  is  conveyed  to  con- 
sciousness by  a  series  of  *  local  signs '  —  distinct  quality 
of  some  kind  which  serves  to  distinguish  each  visual  or 
anatomical  point  from  every  other.  Others  hold  that  the 
eye  explores  in  its  movement  the  outline  of  the  object, 
and  a  constant  succession  of  sensations  of  eye-movement 


92  hifants    Movemejits. 

thus  represents  the  particular  form  explored.  It  is  safe 
to  say  that,  whether  one  or  both  of  these  causes  operate 
to  give  the  child  its  form  intuition,  we  can  still  say  that 
there  is  a  constant  series  of  sensations  from  the  eyes, 
which  can  be  run  over  in  one  direction,  or  the  reverse ; 
this  we  may  call  the  'visual  form  series,'  v,  v\  v\  in 
the  analysis  of  handwriting. 

But  the  child,  in  setting  out  to  draw,  moves  his  hand, 
thus  getting  sensations  from  the  hand  itself  according  to 
its  locality  at  this  moment  and  at  that  If  you  consider 
the  hand  as  moving  slowly,  it  will  be  evident  that  there  are 
touch  sensations,  joint  sensations,  muscle-tension  sensa- 
tions, etc.,  giving  together  a  certain  massive  sense  of  the 
locality  of  the  hand  as  it  goes  from  place  to  place.  With 
no  care  as  to  the  exact  characters  of  these  sensations,  we 
may  yet  say  that  there  is  a  series  which  is  constant  for  the 
drawing  of  the  outline  of  a  plane  figure ;  this  series  we 
may  call  the  '  muscular  form  series,'  denoted  by  ?;/,  ;;/,  ;;/'. 

But,  further,  the  child  has  other  means  of  finding  out 
about  movements  than  by  the  sensations  from  his  own 
hand  and  arm.  He  sees  other  people's  movements  and  his 
own.  In  this  case  of  drawing,  he  is  instructed  in  holding 
his  pencil,  sees  his  teacher  move  his  pencil  over  the  paper, 
sees  his  own  arm  and  hand  and  pencil-point  in  each  case. 
This,  it  is  evident,  gives  a  more  or  less  exact  additional 
series  of  eye  sensations,  according  as  the  child  is  able 
by  frequent  following  of  the  movements  of  others  and 
himself  to  appropriate  each  such  set  of  movements  to  a 
regular  visual  form.  This  third  series  of  sensations  in  a 
particular  case,  we  may  call  the  'optical  movement  series,' 
o,  <?,'  o''  etc. 

It  is  evident  that  the  acquisition  of  writing  involves  all 


The  Orighi  of  Handwritmg.  93 

of  these  three  scries ;  and  it  is  easy  to  show  that  they  are 
all  present  in  our  most  rapid  and  careless  writing.  If  one 
shut  his  eyes  and  write,  he  preserves  the  general  form  of 
the  letters,  but  they  are  badly  made  compared  with  those 
which  he  makes  when  he  sees  his  pen  and  follows  its 
movement.  This  shows  his  dependence  upon  the  0  series. 
But  he  can  still  very  greatly  improve  his  penmanship  if 
his  paper  be  ruled,  or  more  again  if  he  write  after  a  well- 
written  copy  ;  this  shows  the  dependence,  relatively  slight, 
upon  the  v  series.  As  to  the  revival  of  the  v  series 
also,  as  copies  to  w^hich  to  conform,  cases  of  verbal 
blindness  show  that  lesions  of  tlie  optical  brain  centre 
may  make  it  impossible  for  one  to  write  at  all.^  Further, 
if  we  try  to  write  with  the  skin  benumbed  with  cold,  or  on 
a  surface  which  yields,  the  letters  are  made  without  form 
and  thrown  out  of  their  due  proportion.  This  in  turn 
shows  the  continual  presence  of  the  in  series.^ 

That  a  child  gets  his  visual  form  (^')  series  first  is  proved 
from  his  recognition  and  even  naming  of  figures,  pictures, 
etc.,  before  he  draws  them  or  sees  them  drawn.  These 
series  are  at  first  few,  but  he  gradually  adds  to  them  as 
the  range  of  his  exploration  becomes  wider  and  as  familiar 
objects  become  in  his  experience  more  and  more  familiar. 
There  is  a  constant  tendency,  therefore,  from  the  random 
wandering  of  the  eyes  over  many  forms  and  over  shape- 
less things,  to  concentration  on  interesting,  familiar,  and 
regular  forms  of  things.  So  we  may  say  there  is  a  con- 
tinual growth  and  upbuilding  of  different  v  scries. 

1  See  cases  cited  by  Brazier,  Revue  philosophique,  October,  1892,  p.  338. 

2  See  Goldscheider's  demonstration  of  the  importance  of  pressure  sen- 
sations in  handwriting,  Physiologie  ti.  Pathologie  der  Handschrift,  in  Zeit- 
schrift  fiir  Psychiatric,  XXIV.,  1 892. 


94  Infa7its    Movements. 

This  is  at  the  expense  of  the  optical  movement  {p) 
series,  as  may  be  seen  from  the  following  considerations : 
At  first  the  child  follows  all  movements,  which  he  sees,  of 
himself  and  of  others,  with  equal  attention  —  his  eye  is  a 
slave  to  movement  anywhere  and  everywhere  —  his  atten- 
tion is  reflex  and  visual.  He  looks  closely  at  his  own 
movements.  His  visual  figure  series  follows  in  conscious- 
ness the  cue  set  by  his  optical  movement  series,  term  by 
term,  thus :  — 

\ 
< 

But  when  he  learns,  as  I  have  said,  to  select  his  v  series, 
he  then  reverses  his  association  and  so  has  to  select  out 
certain  o  series.  He  sees  and  attends  to  the  movements 
that  interest  him,  the  things  that  concern  him ;  he  prefers 
the  toys  which  his  eye  explores  by  preference.  So,  contin- 
ually, the  0  series  get  broken  up  and  formed  anew,  accord- 
ing as  the  0  elements  are  lined  up  anew  under  the  lead  of 
the  V  series,  thus  :  — 


o; 

o\ 

o\ 

etc., 

\ 

\ 

etc. 

< 

V, 

v\ 

v\ 

etc., 

\ 

\ 

\ 

\ 

< 

Oy 

o\ 

o\ 

/// 

0     , 

etc 

Now  there,  in  this  association,  is  the  rise  of  '  tracery  im- 
itation '  in  its  crudest  form ;  this  reversal  of  association 
tween  the  o  and  the  v  elements.  Its  characteristics,  as 
imitation,  are  merely  the  vaguest  indications  of  direction 
and  proportion.  It  utilizes  no  constant  ;;2  series;  that  is, 
no  constant  detailed  series  of  hand  and  arm  movements, 
but  only  the  up  and  down,  and  right  and  left,  movements 
acquired   by  the  child  in  its  early   random  exercises,  to- 


The  Origin  of  Handwriting.  95 

gether  with  whatever  more  definite  movements  education 
may  have  produced.  As  I  interpret  it,  H.'s  ability  sud- 
denly to  *  imitate  '  my  drawing  of  a  man  was  largely  the 
discovery  that  by  a  series  of  ordinary  movements  of  her 
own  which  she  saw  {0  element),  and  which  her  random 
practice  had  made  easy,  she  could  bring  about,  in  a  meas- 
ure, what  I  did.  Instead  of  her  eye  following  the  tracing 
left  by  the  point  of  the  pen  (y  series  subordinated  to  0 
series),  as  formerly  it  did,  she  now  found  that  her  hand 
and  pen,  as  she  watched  them,  could  follow  the  outline  I 
had  made,  or  her  memory  of  it  {p  series  subordinated  to 
the  V  series). 

Such  as  it  is,  however,  tracery  imitation  is  a  long  way 
from  handwriting.  And  the  essential  difference  is  the 
introduction  of  sensations  of  movement  {m  series),  whereby 
the  operations  of  the  hand  are  held  in  control.  How, 
then,  does  the  m  series  get  its  influence  1 

Eye  movements  start  in  a  chaotic  random  state,  as 
we  have  seen,  and  only  gradually  take  on  the  definite 
character  of  separate  series,  as  the  customary  explorations, 
fixations,  visual  curiosities  of  experience  serve  to  fix  them. 
But  arm  movements  are  just  the  reverse.  At  first  the  arm 
is  capable  of  very  few  movements,  the  elbow  of  one,  and 
the  fingers  of  none.  Moreover,  the  joints  are  stiff,  the 
movements  to  a  degree  inconvenient,  and  all  ventures  away 
from  certain  reactions  provided  for  by  native  arrangements, 
are  painful  and  unsuccessful.  This  means  that  the  child 
starts  with  certain  very  definite  arm  movements  (;;/  series). 
But  this  does  not  last.  He  gets  limbered  up.  His  ;;/  series 
gets  broken  into  units  and  recombined  into  new  series. 
This  is  seen  in  the  progress  shown  in  H.'s  series  of  draw- 
ings given  above. 


96  Infants    Movements. 

This  prepares  the  way  for  a  second  victory  of  the  v 
series.  At  first  the  hand  must  move  in  certain  directions 
represented  in  consciousness  by  the  scries  m,  ;;/,  ;;/',  etc. ; 
the  eye  can  move  in  any  direction  indifferently  ;  so  the 
eye  follows  the  hand,  and  we  have  in  consequence :  — 


) 

m  , 

i7l     , 

etc., 

\ 

\ 

\ 

etc. 

But  as  the  w's  get  broken  up  out  of  their  native  series, 
and  the  v'^  get  tied  together  into  series,  there  comes  a  con- 
flict for  leadership  followed  by  the  reverse  association  :  — 


< V,  V ,  V  ,  etc., 

< m,  m\  m\  etc. 

Now  certain  muscular  sensations  {in  elements)  represent 
movements  which,  being  also  seen,  have  0  elements  attached 
to  them.  And  we  have  already  seen  that  tracery  imitation 
requires  a  certain  correspondence  between  relatively  fixed 
V  series  and  relatively  free  0  series.  The  breaking  up  of 
the  m  series  just  described  now  makes  it  possible  for  more 
of  these  correspondences  to  occur,  i.e.,  for  more  movements 
seen  to  describe  figures  seen.  Now  it  is  by  the  gradual 
increase  of  these  correspondences,  this  practice  and  empha- 
sis into  habit,  that  handwriting  is  built  up  with  much 
effort. 

There  is,  therefore,  an  extremely  close  association  be- 
tween a  visual  figure  series  and  the  series  of  hand  move- 
ments required  to  reproduce  it.  And  this  association 
between  them  is  secured  by  the  reproduction  concomi- 
tantly through  the  seen  hand  movements  {0  series)  of 
a  real  figure  which  conforms  to  the  original  visual  ideal 


The  O  rig  in  of  Haudzvj^itinor,  97 

by  which  tie  whole  is  prompted.     To  complicate  our  illus- 
tration, this  is  what  we  finally  get :  — 


^ V,            V  ,             V  ,             V    , 

et 

c, 

<                  0,               0,              0    ,               0     , 

etc., 

<. in,         in\       in', 

in    , 

etc. 

It  is  easy  to  see,  therefore,  that  in  handwriting  the 
movements  made  are  controlled  by  two  different  but  con- 
curring agencies :  first,  the  sensations  in  the  arm  and 
hand  must  be,  point  by  point,  those  called  for  by  the  fast 
associations  of  movement  with  letter  outlines.  This  ten- 
dency is  actually  so  strong  in  the  young  child  who  has 
learned  to  make  a  few  figures  successfully,  that  it  draws 
new  objects  like  the  old  shapes,  even  v/hen  they  are  really 
very  different,  and  in  spite  of  close  attention  to  the  plain 
copies  put  before  them.  And,  second,  the  figure  which 
the  eye  takes  in  as  the  pen  point  inscribes  it,  must  also 
agree,  point  by  point,  with  the  outline  figure  which  is  held 
in  consciousness  and  aimed  at. 

With  the  further  development  of  handwriting,  the  per- 
formance tends  to  become  independent  of  sight.  In  swift 
writing  we  use  our  eyes  mainly  to  keep  on  the  line  and  on 
the  paper,  not  to  see  that  the  letters  are  made  properly. 
As  far  as  we  do  examine  them,  it  is  only  to  see  that  they 
fall  within  the  limits  of  legibility ;  and  we  know  so  well 
about  what  our  hand  can  do,  that  we  rarely  have  occa- 
sion to  revise  a  word  once  written.  The  muscular  scries 
(;;/  series)  becomes  so  delicately  adjusted  to  the  needs 
of  the  memory  image  of  figure,  of  letter,  and  of  word 
{y  series),  that  a  further  optical  test  (p  series)  is  not 
required. 


98  Infants    Movements, 

It  is  interesting  to  note,  also,  that  this  growing  inde- 
pendence in  the  sensations  of  movement  under  practice 
and  habit  may  go  so  far  that  the  visual  copy  {y  series) 
may  be  dispensed  with  altogether ;  this  is  shown  to  be 
true  in  pathological  cases  of  alexia,  or  inability  to  read, 
which  do  not  involve  agraphia,  or  inability  to  write.  In 
these  cases  we  have  the  extreme  motor  type  of  verbal 
memory,  emphasized  by  Strieker  :  persons  who  remember 
written  words  by  the  memory  of  the  sensations  involved  in 
writing  them. 

A  further  fundamental  question  arises,  however,  when 
we  come  to  examine  the  actual  parallelism  of  the  associ- 
ated series  of  elements  involved.  How  does  it  come  about 
that  the  child  is  able  to  secure  the  agreement,  term 
by  term,  between  the  elements  of  the  v  and  the  in 
series  respectively  —  the  agreement  by  which  this  associa- 
tion is  established  t  How  does  he  get  v  with  ;;/,  v  with 
m\  v'  with  m\  in  this  regular  way,  and  both  in  proper 
association  with  o,  o\  o'\  etc.  }  This  is  the  question  of 
the  possibility  of  any  adaptation  of  movements  to  ends, 
whether  voluntary  or  not.  Its  discussion  is  taken  up 
later,^  and  in  that  connection  the  general  principles  are 
given  by  which  this  case  may  be  solved  with  others. 

I  need  not  go  into  the  further  questions  of  the  pathology 
and  abnormalities  of  handwriting,  as  this  book  is  not  writ- 
ten for  purposes  of  exposition.  The  kinds  and  varieties  of 
agraphia  —  inability  to  write,  from  nervous  lesion  —  are 
well  classified,  on  the  basis  of  impairment  of  one  or  more 
of  the  elements  involved,  by  Goldscheider,  in  the  paper 
already   quoted.      His   explanation    of    mirror-writing   is, 

^  It  is  the  fundamental  fact  of  motor  adjustment  or  'Accommodation,'  to 
which  I  give  the  name  '  organic  selection,'  below,  Chap.  VII. 


The  Origin  of  Haudiuriting.  99 

however,  so  clearly  a  proof  of  the  adequacy  of  the  points 
in  which  his  theory  and  mine  agree,  that  I  may  briefly 
explain  it . 

Mirror-writing  is  the  form  of  inscription  which  arises 
from  tracing  words  with  the  left  hand  by  an  exact  redupli- 
cation of  the  movements  of  the  right  hand,  in  a  symmetri- 
cal way  from  the  central  point  in  front  of  the  body,  out 
toward  the  left.  It  produces  a  form  of  reversed  writing 
which  cannot  be  read  until  it  is  seen  in  a  mirror.  Many 
left-handed  children  tend  to  write  in  this  way.  Some 
adults,  on  taking  a  pen  to  write  with  the  left  hand,  find 
they  can  write  only  in  this  way.  Even  those,  like  myself, 
to  whom  the  movements  seem,  when  thought  of  in  visual 
terms,  quite  confusing  and  impossible,  yet  find,  when  they 
try  to  write  with  both  hands  together,  in  the  air,  from  a 
central  point  right  and  left,  that  the  left-hand  mirror- 
writing  movements  are  very  natural  and  easy.  Now,  why 
is  it  t 

If  a  man  is  of  the  so-called  'visual'  type,  i.e.,  if  he 
depends  mainly  on  his  v  series,  recalling,  in  his  writing, 
the  look  of  the  letters,  etc.,  and  by  comparing  it  with  the 
resulting  writing,  conforming  his  movement  series  to  it, 
then  any  movements  which  violate  the  figure  presented  by 
visual  memory  are  unintelligible.  Such  a  man  must  re- 
produce, with  his  left  hand,  the  visual  images  as  produced 
by  the  right.  That  is,  he  must  write  from  left  to  right 
with  both  hands,  which  involves  symmetrical  movements. 
This  represents  the  power  of  the  v  series  to  bring  the 
movements  of  both  hands  into  conformity  to  it.  If,  on 
the  contrary,  his  vi  series  has  grown  independent  by  prac- 
tice, and  he  remembers  written  words  not  by  the  way 
they  look  mainly,  but  by  the  way  it  feels  to  write  them  — 


lOO  Infants    Movejnents. 

if  he  is  of  the  so-called  '  motor '  type  in  his  handwriting  — 
then  his  left-hand  writing  must  reproduce  the  series  of 
muscular  senations,  as  his  right-hand  writing  has  estab- 
lished them.  This  represents  the  power  of  movements 
established  by  one  hand  to  carry  the  other  hand  also 
with  it  in  a  symmetrical  way.  His  left-hand  position 
must  duplicate  at  each  moment  his  right-hand  position, 
when  he  comes  to  try  the  experiment  of  writing  in  the  air 
with  both  hands.  This  gives  symmetrical  movements,  with 
the  two  hands,  which  means  mirror-writing  with  the  left 
hand.^ 

The  following  notice  and  criticism  of  Goldscheider's 
paper,  revised  slightly  from  my  earlier  review  ^  of  it,  may 
serve  to  show  the  difference  between  my  theory  and  his, 
and  at  the  same  time  sum  up  the  foregoing  discussion. 

Goldscheider  gives  first  a  theoretical  account  of  the 
origin  of  what  I  have  called  '  tracery  imitation '  under 
the  equivalent  phrase  malende  Reproduction,  endeavouring 
to  account  for  the  association  between  visual  pictures 
(letters,  figures,  etc.)  and  the  hand  movements  necessary 
to  reproduce  them  (as  in  drawing,  writing,  etc.).  He 
finds  three  factors  or  *  moments '  in  the  rise  of  tracery 
imitation  :  ^  ^,  an  optical  picture  of  the  hand  movements 
required  for  making  the  required  figure  (pptische  Vorstel- 
liing  der  Handbezveginig ;  my  o  series),  derived  from  the 
child's  earlier  sight  of  his   own   and   others'  hand  move- 

1  This  has  been  held  by  Fechner  and  others  to  be  a  strong  proof  that  the 
discharge  of  energy  into  one  side  of  the  body  tends  to  stimulate  the  corre- 
sponding members  of  the  other  side  to  similar  movements  {Mi(bewegungen). 
I  have  mentioned  above  (p.  65)  that  my  experiments  on  the  infant's  use  of 
its  hands  confirm  this  view. 

2  Ajuerican  yotirn.  of  Psychology,  V.,  1893,  420-422. 

3  See  p.  587  of  the  art.  cited,  where  he  gives  a  resume. 


The  Orighi  of  Handwriting.  loi 

mcnts ;  B,  a  series  of  new  motor  discharges  ctrengthencd 
by  practice,  felt  as  C,  a  series  of  sensations  of  actual 
movement,  by  which  the  discharges  are  regulated  and 
controlled  {jiiotoriscJics  Bczvcguiigsbild ;  my  ;;/  series). 
Moment  A  is  clearly  seen  in  the  fact  often  remarked, 
that  in  writing  with  the  eyes  closed  we  still  follow  the 
pen  point  in  its  inscription  of  an  optical  outline.  Further, 
in  moment  A  there  are  two  factors :  first,  constant  memo- 
ries {Bilder)  from  each  position,  and  each  amount  and  direc- 
tion of  movement  of  the  member  (my  m  series);  and 
second,  optical  presentations  of  the  same  positions  and 
movements.  Here  we  have,  therefore,  movements  both 
felt  and  seen.  Tracery  imitation  then  consists  in  the  fact 
that  new  movements  are  held,  through  the  sensations  they 
give,  into  conformity  to  the  series  established  by  being 
both  felt  and  seen. 

This,  it  is  at  once  seen,  leaves  out  of  account  altogether 
the  visual  figure  series  (my  v  series)  estabHshed  altogether 
independently  of  hand  movements.  Goldscheider's  theory 
is,  therefore,  in  so  far  inadequate,  for  it  assumes  tracery 
imitation,  i.e.,  it  supposes  that  the  hand  has  already  gone 
over  the  figure  to  be  imitated,  giving  moment  A  (requisite 
movements  both  felt  and  seen).  But  the  question  remains 
behind  this :  How  were  such  series  selected  from  other 
movements  felt  as  well  as  seen  .^  How  does  the  optical 
presentation  of  figure  {optisches  Bild  des  Gestaltes)  get 
associated  point  by  point  with  the  twofold  series  {in  series 
and  o  series)  represented  by  Goldscheider's  moment  A  ? 
Goldscheider  does  not  take  account  of  the  fact  that  visual 
recognition  of  figure  (letters,  pictures,  etc.)  is  definitely 
established  long  before  the  child  is  able  or  has  any  ten- 
dency to  try  to  trace  them,  as  has  been  shown  above.     He 


I02  Infants    Movements. 

is  wrong,  accordingly,  in  identifying  the  original  optical 
figure  series  with  the  optical  hand  movement  series. 

The  question  at  issue  then  is :  How  does  the  purely 
visual  figure  series  {y  series)  come  to  stimulate  the  two 
series  which  originate  from  the  movement  {in  and  o  series). 
My  observations  show  —  to  sum  up  the  foregoing  pages — 
that  the  process  is  as  follows :  As  the  child's  experience 
widens,  its  optical  perception  of  figure  grows  exact,  so  that 
certain  retinal  or  eye  movement  series  grow  more  and  more 
fixed.  At  this  period  the  arm  and  hand  movement  series, 
at  first  few  and  fixed,  are  broken  up  with  the  increasing 
mobility  of  the  member.  Consequently,  (i)  from  the  arm 
movement  sensations  those  elements  are  emphasized  which 
represent  movements  seen  as  well  as  felt,  and  (2)  from  the 
latter  those  are  further  emphasized  which  produce  results 
identical  with  elements  in  certain  definite  figure  series 
already  established  by  the  eye.  This  reproduction  of  vis- 
ual figure  elements,  by  movements  which  are  both  seen 
and  felt,  establishes  firmly  the  association  between  the 
movement  sensations  {in  series)  and  the  figure  presenta- 
tions {y  series),  and  the  optical  memories  of  the  hand 
movements  {p  series)  tend  to  fall  away. 

The  validity  of  my  analysis  as  opposed  to  that  of  Gold- 
scheider  rests  them  upon  the  evidence  that  the  child  has 
a  sense  of  figure  established  first  by  vision  alone.  Several 
points  may  be  cited  in  support  of  this  view:  i.  The  child 
recognizes  letters,  pictures,  etc.,  before  it  is  able  to  trace 
them  or  speak  their  equivalents.  2.  We  can  trace  figures 
by  movements  of  the  head,  foot,  trunk,  etc.,  —  movements 
which  we  cannot  see.  If  our  sense  of  figure  is  indepen- 
dent of  any  particular  thing  that  moves,  it  is  easy  to  see 
how  this  is  possible.      If,  on  the  contrary,  the  sense  of 


The  Oi^igiii  of  Handiuriting.  103 

figure  is  derived  entirely  from  movements  both  felt  and 
seen,  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  such  accomplishments  are 
to  be  accounted  for.  3.  In  memories  of  actual  writing, 
for  example,  my  autograph,  I,  for  one,  picture  clearly  the 
way  the  letters  look  as  they  are  left  by  the  pen  on  the 
paper,  and  also  the  sensations  of  movement  in  the  hand 
and  arm :  but  hardly  at  all  the  way  the  hand  or  pen 
movements  look  at  the  successive  stages  of  the  signature. 

4.  In  the  case  of  writing,  a  blind  man  has  no  series  cor- 
responding to  the  look  of  the  actual  movements  to  those 
who  see :  he  writes  by  the  association  between  his  move- 
ment sensations  and  the  touch  figure  series  which  corre- 
sponds to  the  visual  figure  series  of  the  man  who  sees.^ 

5.  In  another  analogous  case,  the  child's  learning  to 
speak,  there  are  only  two  elements,  the  auditory  series,  in 
the  case,  we  will  say,  of  the  gutturals,  which  infants  some- 
times learn  first,  and  the  sound  series  which  results  from 
the  child's  own  voice  (omitting  the  movement  sensations 
which  are  not  in  question) ;  there  is  no  hearing  of  the 
movements  of  speech  in  addition  to  the  hearing  of  the 
sounds  spoken,  i.e.,  nothing  at  all  corresponding  to  Gold- 
scheider's  optical  hand  movement  series,  considered  as  dis- 
tinct from  the  resulting  visual  figure  series.  In  hearing, 
accordingly,  the  auditory  sound  '  copy '  series  corresponds 
to  my  visual  figure  '  copy  '  series. 

1  Cf.  Broadbent's  remarks  on  the  writing  of  the  blind,  Brit.  Med.  yoiirn., 
1876,  I.,  p.  435. 


CHAPTER   VI. 

Suggestion. 
§  I.    General  Definition. 

The  rise  of  hypnotism  in  late  years  has  opened  the  way 
to  an  entirely  new  method  of  mental  study.  The  doctrine 
of  reflexes  was  before  largely  physiological,  and  only  path- 
ological cases  could  be  cited  in  evidence  of  a  mechanism 
in  certain  forms  of  consciousness  as  well  as  out  of  it ;  and 
even  pathological  cases  of  extreme  sensitiveness  to  casual 
susfSiestion  from  the  environment  or  from  other  men  did 
not  receive  the  interpretation  which  the  phenomena  of 
hypnotic  suggestion  are  now  making  possible,  i.e.,  that 
suggestion  by  idea,  or  through  consciousness,  must  be 
recognized  to  be  as  fundamental  a  kind  of  motor  stim- 
ulus as  the  direct  excitation  of  a  sense  organ.  Nervous 
reflexes  may  work  directly  through  states  of  conscious- 
ness, or  be  stimulated  by  them  ;  these  states  of  con- 
sciousness may  be  integral  portions  of  such  reflexes ; 
and,  further,  a  large  part  of  our  mental  life  is  made  up  of 
a  mass  of  such  ideo-motor  *  suggestions,'  which  are  nor- 
mally in  a  state  of  subconscious  inhibition. 

Without  discussing  the  nature  of  the  hypnotic  state  in 
the  first  instance,  nor  venturing  to  pass  judgment  in  this 
connection  upon  the  question  whether  the  suggestion 
theory  is  sufficient  to  explain  all  the  facts,  we  may  yet 

104 


General  Definition.  105 

isolate  the  aspect  spoken  of  above,  and  discuss  its  general 
bearings  in  the  normal  life,  especially  of  children.  Of 
course,  the  question  at  once  occurs,  is  the  normal  life  a 
life  to  any  degree  of  ideo-motor  or  suggestive  reactions,  or 
is  the  hypnotic  sleep  in  this  aspect  of  it,  quite  an  artificial 
thing  ?  Further,  if  such  suggestion  is  normal  or  typical 
in  the  mental  life,  what  is  the  nature  of  the  inhibition  by 
which  it  is  ordinarily  kept  under  —  in  other  words,  what  is 
its  relation  to  what  we  call  will  ?  Leaving  this  second 
question  altogether  unanswered  for  the  present,^  it  has 
occurred  to  me  to  observe  children,  especially  my  own 
H.  and  E.,  during  their  first  two  years,  to  see  if  light  could 
be  thrown  upon  the  first  inquiry  above.  If  it  be  true  that 
ideo-motor  suggestion  is  a  normal  thing,  then  early  child 
life  should  present  the  most  striking  analogies  to  the  hyp- 
notic state  in  this  essential  respect.  This  is  a  field  that 
has  hitherto,  as  far  as  I  know,  been  largely  unexplored 
by  workers  in  the  psychology  of  suggestion. 

It  is  not  necessary,  I  think,  to  discuss  in  detail  the 
meaning  of  this  much-abused  but,  in  the  main,  very  well- 
defined  word,  'suggestion.'  The  general  conception  may 
be  sufficiently  well  indicated  for  the  present  by  the  fol- 
lowing quotations  from  authorities.  They  all  agree  on  the 
main  phenomenon,  their  definitions  differing  in  the  place 
of  emphasis,  according  as  one  aspect  rather  than  another 
supplies  ground  for  a  theory.  I  may  gather  them  up  in 
my  own  definition,  which  aims  to  describe  the  fundamental 
fact  apart  from  theory,  and  is  therefore  better  suited  to  our 
preliminary  exposition.  I  have  myself  defined  suggestion 
as  "from  the  side  of  consciousness  .  .  .  the  tendency  of 
a  sensory    or  an  ideal  state    to  be  followed   by    a    motor 

1  See,  however,  Chap-  XIII.,  below. 


io6  Suggestion. 

state/*  ^  and  it  is  "  typified  by  the  abrupt  entrance  from 
without  into  consciousness  of  an  idea  or  image,  or  a 
vaguely  conscious  stimulation,  which  tends  to  bring  about 
the  muscular  or  volitional  effects  which  ordinarily  follow 
upon  its  presence."^ 

Janet  defines  suggestion  as  **a  motor  reaction  brought 
about  by  language  or  perception."^  This  narrows  the  field 
to  certain  classes  of  stimulations,  well  defined  in  con- 
sciousness, and  overlooks  the  more  subtle  suggestive  in- 
fluences emphasized  by  the  Nancy  school  of  theorizers. 
Schmidkunz  makes  it:  ''die  Herbeirufung  eines  Ereig- 
nisses  durch  die  Erweckung  seines  psychischen  Bildes."^ 
This  again  makes  a  mental  picture  of  the  suggested 
*  event '  in  consciousness  necessary,  and,  besides,  does  not 
rule  out  ordinary  complex  associations.  It  neglects  the 
requirement  insisted  upon  by  Janet,  i.e.,  that  the  stimu- 
lus be  from  without,  as  from  hearing  words,  seeing  actions, 
objects,  etc.  Wundt  says  :  "  Suggestion  ist  Association 
mit  gleichzeitiger  Verengerung  des  Bevvusstseins  auf  die 
durch  die  Association  angeregten  Vorstellungen."  ^  In 
this  definition  Wundt  meets  the  objection  urged  against 
the  definition  of  suggestion  in  terms  of  complex  associa- 
tion, by  holding  down  the  association  to  a  'narrowed  con- 
sciousness;* but  he,  again,  neglects  the  outward  nature  of 
the  stimulus,  and  does  not  give  an  adequate  account  of 
how  this  narrowing  of  consciousness  upon  one  or  two 
associated   terms,   usually  a  sensori-motor  association,   is 

1  Science,  Feb.  27,  1891,  where  many  of  the  observations  given  in  this 
chapter  were  first  recorded. 

2  Handbook  of  Psychology.,  II.,  297. 

3  Aut.  Psych.,  p.  218. 

*  Psych,  der  Suggestion. 

"  Hypnotismus  u.  Suggestion,  II.  Abs. 


General  Definition.  107 

brought  about.  Zieheu  :  *'  In  dcr  Bcibringung  der  Vor- 
stellung  liegt  das  Wesen  der  Suggestion."  ^  Here  we  have 
the  sufficient  recognition  of  the  artificial  and  external 
source  of  the  stimulation,  but  yet  we  surely  cannot  say 
that  all  such  stimulations  succeed  in  getting  suggestive 
force.  A  thousand  things  suggested  to  us  are  rejected, 
scorned,  laughed  at.  This  is  so  marked  a  fact  in  current 
theory,  especially  on  the  pathological  side,  that  I  have 
found  it  convenient  to  use  a  special  phrase  for  conscious- 
ness when  in  the  purely  suggestible  condition,  i.e.,  '  reac- 
tive consciousness.' 2  The  phrase  'conscious  reflex'  is 
sometimes  used,  but  is  not  good  as  applied  to  these  sug- 
gestive reactions  :  for  they  are  cortical  in  their  brain  seat, 
and  are  not  as  definite  as  ordinary  reflexes. 

For  my  present  purposes,  the  definition  I  have  given 
from  my  earlier  work  is  sufficient,  since  it  emphasizes  the 
movement  side  of  suggestion.  The  fundamental  fact  about 
all  suggestion,  —  not  hypnotic  suggestion  alone,  which 
some  of  the  definitions  which  I  have  cited  have  exclusive 
reference  to,^  —  is,  in  my  view,  the  removal  of  inhibitions  to 
movement  brought  about  by  a  certain  condition  of  con- 
sciousness, which  may  be  called  'suggestibility.'  The  fur- 
ther question,  what  makes  consciousness  suggestible,  is 
open  to  some  debate.  There  are  two  general  statements, 
—  not  to  elaborate  a  theory  here  however,  —  which  are  not 
done  justice  to  by  any  of  the  earlier  theories.  We  may 
say,  first,  that  a  suggestible  consciousness  is  one  in  which 
the  ordinary  criteria  of  belief  are  in  abeyance ;  the  coeffi- 

1  Philos.  Monatshefte,  XXIX.,  1 893,  p.  489. 

2  Loc.  cit.,  pp.  60  ff.,  and  Chap.  XII. 

8  See  the  section  below  in  this  chapter  (§  7)  in  which  the  main  facts  of 
hypnosis  are  briefly  stated,  and  the  further  references  to  the  theory  of  hypnotism 
in  §  3  of  the  chapter  on  Volition,  below. 


1 08  Sicggestion. 

cients  of  reality,  to  use  the  terms  of  my  earlier  discussion 
of  belief,^  are  no  longer  apprehended.  Consciousness 
finds  all  presentations  of  equal  value,  in  terms  of  uncritical 
reality-feeling.  It  accordingly  responds  to  them  all,  each 
in  turn,  readily  and  equally.  Second  :  this  state  of  things 
is  due  primarily  to  a  violent  reaction  or  fixation  of  atten- 
tion, resulting  in  its  usual  monoideism,  or  'narrowing  of 
consciousness.'  For  belief  is  a  motor  attitude  resting 
upon  complexity  of  presentation  and  representation.  Just 
as  soon  as  this  mature  complexity  is  destroyed,  belief  dis- 
appears, and  all  ideas  '  become  free  and  equal '  in  doing 
their  executive  work.  Each  presentation  streams  out  in 
action  by  suggestion  ;  and  stands  itself  fully  in  the  pos- 
session of  consciousness,  with  none  of  the  pros  and  cons 
of  its  usual  claim  to  be  accepted  as  real,  gaining  also  the 
still  greater  establishment  which  comes  from  the  return 
wave  upon  itself  of  its  own  motor  discharge.  The  ques- 
tion of  suggestion  becomes  then  that  of  the  mechanism 
of  attention  in  working  three  results  :  (i)  the  narrowing 
of  consciousness  upon  the  suggested  idea,  (2)  the  conse- 
quent narrowing  of  the  motor  impulses  to  simpler  lines 
of  discharge,  and  (3)  the  consequent  inhibition  of  the  dis- 
criminating and  selective  attitude  which  constitutes  belief 
in  reality. 

The  truth  of  these  general  statements  is  thoroughly 
confirmed  by  the  observation  of  children  in  whom  the  gen- 
eral system  of  adjustments,  which  constitute  the  'worlds 
of  reality '  of  us  adults,  are  not  yet  effected.  Little  chil- 
dren are  credulous,  in  an  unreflective  sense,  even  to  illusion. 
Tastes,  colours,  sensations  generally,  pains,  pleasures,  may 

1  Handbook,  II.,  Chap.  VII. 


Physiological  Suggestion.  109 

be  suggested  to  them,  as  is  shown  by  the  instances  given 
in  later  pages. 

It  is,  however,  to  the  truth  of  the  fundamental  fact  of 
normal  motor  suggestion  found  in  children,  that  I  wish  to 
devote  a  large  part  of  this  chapter;  and  observations  of 
reactions  clearly  due  to  such  suggestion,  either  under  nat- 
ural conditions  or  by  experiment,  lead  me  to  distinguish 
the  following  kinds  of  suggestion,  mentioned  in  the  follow- 
ing paragraphs,  in  what  I  find  to  be  about  the  order  of 
their  appearance  in  child-life. 

§  2.    P/iysio logical  Suggestion. 

By  *  suggestion  '  is  understood  ordinarily  ideal  or  ideo- 
motor  suggestion,  —  the  origination  from  without  of  a 
motor  reaction,  by  producing  in  consciousness  the  state 
which  is  ordinarily  antecedent  to  that  reaction  ;  but  obser- 
vation of  an  infant  for  the  first  month  or  six  weeks  of  its 
life  leads  to  the  conviction  that  its  life  is  mainly  physiolog- 
ical. The  vacancy  of  consciousness  as  regards  anything 
not  immediately  given  as  sensation,  principally  pleasure 
and  pain,  precludes  the  possibility  of  ideal  suggestion  as 
such.  The  infant  at  this  acfe  has  no  ideas  in  the  sense  of 
distinct  memory  images.  Its  conscious  states  are  largely 
affective.  Accordingly,  when  the  reactions  which  are 
purely  reflex,  and  certain  random  impulsive  movements, 
are  excluded,  we  seem  to  exhaust  the  contents  of  its 
motor  consciousness. 

Yet  even  at  this  remarkably  early  stage  H.  was  found 
to  be  in  a  degree  receptive  of  suggestion,  —  suggestion 
conveyed  by  repeated  stimulation  under  uniform  condi- 
tions. In  the  first  place,  the  suggestions  of  sleep  began 
to  tell  upon  her  before  the  end  of  the  first  month.      Her 


1 1  o  Suggestion. 

nurse  put  her  to  sleep  by  laying  her  face  down  and  pat- 
ting gently  upon  the  end  of  her  spine.  This  position 
soon  became  itself  not  only  suggestive  to  the  child  of 
sleep,  but  sometimes  necessary  to  sleep,  even  when  she 
was  laid  across  the  nurse's  lap  in  what  seemed  to  be  an 
uncomfortable  position. 

This  case  illustrates  what  I  mean  by  physiological  sug- 
gestion. It  shows  the  law  of  physiological  habit  as  it  bor- 
ders on  the  conscious.  No  doubt  some  such  effect  would 
be  produced  by  pure  habit  apart  from  consciousness  ;  but, 
consciousness  being  present,  its  nascent  indefinite  states 
may  be  supposed  to  have  a  quality  of  suggestiveness, 
which  indicates  the  degree  of  fixedness  of  the  habit.  Yet 
the  fact  of  such  a  colouring  of  consciousness  in  connection 
with  the  growth  of  physiological  habit  is  important  more 
as  a  transition  to  more  evident  suggestion. 

The  same  kind  of  phenomena  appear  also  in  adult  life. 
Positions  given  to  the  limbs  of  a  sleeper  lead  to  movements 
ordinarily  associated  with  these  positions.  The  sleeper 
defends  himself,  withdraws  himself  from  cold,  etc.  Chil- 
dren learn  gradually  the  reactions  upon  conditions  of  posi- 
tion, lack  of  support,  etc.,  of  the  body,  necessary  to  keep 
from  falling  out  of  bed,  which  adults  have  so  perfectly. 
All  secondary  automatic  reactions  may  be  classed  here, 
the  sensations  coming  from  one  reaction,  as  in  walking, 
being  suggestions  to  the  next  movement,  unconsciously 
acted  upon.  The  state  of  consciousness  at  any  stage  in 
the  chain  of  movements,  if  present  at  all,  must  be  similar 
to  the  baby's  in  the  case  above,  —  a  mere  internal  glim- 
mering, whose  reproduction,  however  brought  about,  re- 
enforces  its  appropriate  reaction. 

The  most  we  can  say  of  such  physiological  suggestion 


Physiological  S^iggcstion,  1 1 1 

is,  that  the  conscious  state  is  always  present,  and  that  the 
ordinary  reflexes  may  be  subsequently  abbreviated  and 
facilitated. 

Professor  Ribot  says  as  much  as  this.  ''When  a  physio- 
logical state  has  become  a  state  of  consciousness,  through 
this  very  fact  it  has  acquired  a  particular  character.  .  .  . 
It  has  become  a  new  factor  in  the  psychic  life  of  the 
individual  —  a  result  that  can  serve  as  a  starting-point  to 
some  new  (either  conscious  or  unconscious)  work."  And 
again  :  "Volition  is  a  state  of  consciousness  ...  it  marks 
a  series,  i.e.,  the  possibihty  of  being  recommenced,  modi- 
fied, prevented.  Nothing  similar  exists  in  regard  to  auto- 
matic acts  that  are  not  accompanied  by  consciousness.  .  .  . 
Each  state  of  consciousness  ...  in  relation  to  the  future 
development  of  the  individual,  is  a  factor  of  the  first 
order."  ^  Schneider,  also,  writing  from  the  phylogenetic 
point  of  view,  says:  "All  purely  physiological  movements 
serve  a  single  definite  purpose,  are  always  the  same ;  psy- 
chological movements,  on  the  contrary,  have  the  peculiar- 
ity that  they  serve  dijferent  purposes,  follow  upon  quite 
different  stimulations,  and  adapt  themselves  to  circum- 
stances by  combination  and  modification.  .  .  .  Other- 
wise we  would  not  have  any  consciousness,  for  there 
would  be  no  use  for  it.  .  .  .  So  in  connection  with  every 
movement  which  is  accompanied  by  a  phenomenon  of  con- 
sciousness, we  may  hold,  that  this  phenomenon  of  con- 
sciousness is  really  necessary  {ivirklicJi  noting  ist)  for  the 
determination  of  the  movement."  ^     A  more  positive  pro- 

1  Diseases  of  Personality.,  pp.  15-16.  Ribot  in  his  text,  however,  notes 
mainly  the  phylogenetic  advantage  of  consciousness  as  memory,  on  which  see 
below,  Chap.  IX.,  §  3,  and  Chap.  X.,  §§  2,  4. 

2  Der  theorische  Wille,  p.  53. 


1 1 2  Suggestion. 

nouncement  on  the  presence  of  consciousness  in  all  reac- 
tions to  which  the  term  '  suggestion  '  may  be  applied  is  that 
of  Moll.  He  says  :  "■  TJiere  is  no  suggestion  without  co7i- 
sciousness.  It  makes  no  difference  whether  the  suggestion 
is  made  through  imitation  or  by  a  command.  ...  I  must 
insist  in  opposition  to  Mendel  that  there  is  consciousness 
of  what  is  suggested,  and  that  this  is  the  main  point  in 
the  matter.  A  suggestion  without  consciousness  is  to  me 
inconceivable."  ^ 

In  hypnotic  experimentation,  the  influence  of  such  sub- 
conscious or  physiological  suggestions  is  now  generally 
recognized  under  the  general  doctrine  of  hyperaesthesia 
of  the  senses.  Ochorowicz  calls  the  general  phenomenon 
of  suggestion  ideoplasty,^  and  when  no  clear  idea  is  neces- 
sary to  the  effect  as  in  my  'physiological'  suggestion,  he 
speaks  of  'physical  ideoplasty.'  He  says:  ''We  have 
ideoplasty  whenever  the  thought  alone  of  any  functional 
modification  determines  such  functional  modification  .  .  . 
•  the  thought  of  yawning  itself  produces  yawning,  etc."  ^ 

A  particular  observation  made  upon  my  child  E.  dur- 
ing her  second  year,  may  serve  to  make  clear  this  first 
stage  of  suggestion.  She  learned  to  go  to  sleep  sucking 
her  bottle,  the  rubber  of  which  was  left  in  her  mouth 
while  she  slept.  Now,  at  any  sound,  touch,  or  other  sud- 
den stimulation,  such  as  the  flaring  up  of  the  light,  she 
began  with  more  or  less  vigour  to  suck  the  bottle,  giving 
no  other  sign  of  awaking  whatever,  and  really  not  awaking, 
but  only  passing  from  a  deeper  sleep,  or  less  consciousness, 
to  a  lighter  sleep,  or  more  consciousness.     Now,  as  I  inter- 

1  Hyp7iotisin,  p.  267  (italics  his). 

2  Ochorowicz,  Mental  Suggestion,  p.  25. 

3  Ibid.  354-5. 


Physiological  Suggestion.  1 1  3 

pret  it,  the  stimulus,  arousing  more  brain  process,  height- 
ened the  sleep  or  dream  consciousness,  brought  out  the 
sensations  in  the  lips  about  the  rubber,  and  these  sensa- 
tions by  physiological  suggestion  set  up  the  sucking  move- 
ments. These  movements  in  turn  had  their  habitual  in- 
fluence in  sending  the  child  off  into  deep  sleep  again.  Then, 
later,  it  is  probable  that  even  the  lip  sensations  were  not 
necessary ;  but  the  increased  dynamogeny  of  the  increased 
sensory  consciousness  simply  poured  itself  into  the  lip- 
movement  channels,  since  they  were  associated  last  and 
always  with  the  conditions  of  sleep. 

Liebault  was  brought  to  recognize  this  phenomenon  by 
the  possibility  of  suggesting  purely  physical  functions  suc- 
cessfully to  very  young  children. ^ 

I  have  also  a  remarkable   case  of  the  sug-o^estion  of  a 

DO 

function  to  report  from  the  life  of  my  child  E.  She,  at  a 
little  over  two  years,  was  well  trained  to  cleanly  personal 
habits,  always  informing  her  nurse  or  mother  of  her  needs. 
Her  sister  H,  and  she  were  about  this  time  busy  with  the 
inventive  games  of  childhood,  in  which  H.,  the  older,  took 
the  place  of  'mama,'  and  the  little  one  became  her  'baby.' 
This  play  was  carried  consistently  into  the  most  minute 
and  sustained  details.  Very  soon  the  children's  mother 
was  astonished  to  find  that  E.  was  making  use  occasion- 
ally of  certain  hidden  corners  for  a  minor  function,  which 
she  would  announce  by  violent  weeping  after  its  perform- 
ance. It  turned  out  that  in  the  game  of  '  mama '  and 
'baby,'   'mama'  was  accustomed  to  put  'baby'   to  sleep 

1  See  the  case  of  chronic  constipation  cured  by  suggestion  by  Liebault  in 
a  babe  one  year  old,  quoted  by  Ochorovvicz,  loc.  ciL,  p.  247  (with  his  context). 
Certain  facts  in  the  habits  of  animals,  such  as  the  stopping  of  a  dog  at  a  tree 
because  some  other  dog  has  stopped  there,  are  analogous. 


1 1 4  Suggestion. 

on  sofa,  floor,  etc.,  but  told  her  to  perform  the  custom- 
ary physical  functions  before  'going  to  bed.'  The  child 
acted  upon  the  suggestion  in  the  way  of  docile  obe- 
dience to  her  supposed  'mama.'  And  it  was  only  after 
the  act,  that  her  sense  of  the  true  realities  of  her  train- 
ing, and  her  proper  personal  relationships,  broke  in  to 
destroy  the  semblance  of  reality  which  had  made  the 
suggestion  so  effective. 

We  may  adopt  a  diagrammatic  representation  of  the  ele- 
ments of  a  motor  reaction  at  this  point  for  convenience, 
calling  it  the  'motor  square.'  Figure  IX.  presents  a  square 
of  which  each  corner  represents  a  physiological  process,  as 
it  may  occur  with  or  without  consciousness,  as  follows  :  — 

Let  sg  =  suggestion  (sensory  process)  ;  mp  =  seat  of 
motor  process  ;  int  =  movement  of  muscle ;  inc  —  conscious- 


FiG.  IX.  —  '  Motor  Square.'       Fig.  X.  —  Physiological  Suggestion. 

ness  of  movement  (kinaesthetic  process).  The  sides  of  the 
square  are  connections  between  the  seats  of  these  pro- 
cesses. The  relation  of  the  elements  of  the  'motor  square' 
to  other  cerebral  elements,  and  the  relation  of  this  scheme 
to  others  proposed  by  Lichtheim,  Kussmaul,  etc.,  are 
spoken  of  later.^ 

The  stimulus  sg  (Fig.  X.,  in  which  crosses  at  the  corners 
indicate  nervous  processes  only,  and  circles  indicate  vague 

1  Below,  Chap.  XIII.,  §  3. 


Scnsori-motor  Stcggestion,  1 1 5 

states  of  consciousness)  starts  the  hiotor  process  vip ;  it 
leads  to  movement,  vit,  which  is  reported  to  conscious- 
ness, inc.  The  line  between  sg  and  mc  is  broken,  because 
at  this  stage  in  infancy,  associations  are  only  just  beginning 
to  be  formed  between  a  feehng  of  muscular  movement  and 
its  stimulating  sensation. 

The  cases  of  '  physiological  suggestion,'  as  now  de- 
scribed, tend,  inasmuch  as  they  involve  elements  of  con- 
sciousness, to  take  more  definite  form,  as  *  sensori-motor 
suggestions,'  to  which  we  may  now  turn. 

§  3.    Scnsori-motor  Suggestion. 

These  cases  of  suggestion  may  again  be  best  illustrated 
from  the  phenomena  of  infancy,  before  a  close  definition  is 
attempted.  And  first  we  may  note  some  instances  of  what 
may  be  called  general  suggestions  of  this  sort. 

I.  General. —  Variotis  Sleep  Suggestions.  —  From  the  first 
month  on,  there  was  a  deepening  of  the  hold  upon  the  child 
H.  of  the  early  method  of  inducing  sleep.  The  nurse,  in 
the  meantime,  added  two  nursery  rhymes.  Thus  position, 
pats,  and  rhyme  sounds  were  the  suggesting  stimuli. 
Not  until  the  third  month,  however,  was  there  any  dif- 
ference noticed,  when  the  same  suggestions  came  from 
other  persons.  I  myself  learned,  during  the  fourth  month, 
to  put  her  to  sleep,  and  learned  with  great  difficulty, 
though  pursuing  the  nurse's  method  as  nearly  as  possi- 
ble. Here,  therefore,  was  a  sleep  suggestion  from  the 
personality  of  the  nurse,  —  her  peculiar  voice,  touch,  etc., — 
of  which  mention  is  made  more  fully  below.  At  this  time 
I  assumed  exclusive  charge  of  putting  H.  to  sleep,  in  order 
to  observe  the  phenomena  more  closely.     For  a  month  or 


1 1 6  Suggestion. 

six  weeks  I  made  regular  improvement,  reducing  the  time 
required  from  three-quarters  of  an  hour  to  half  an  hour, 
finding  it  easier  at  night  than  at  midday.  This  indicated 
that  darkness  had  already  become  an  additional  sleep  sug- 
gestion, probably  because  it  shut  out  the  whole  class  of 
sensations  from  sight,  thus  reducing  the  attention  to 
stimulations  which  were  monotonous, ^ 

In  the  following  month  (sixth),  I  reduced  the  time 
required,  day  or  night,  to  about  a  quarter  of  an  hour,  on 
an  average.  In  this  way  I  found  it  possible  to  send  her 
off  to  sleep  at  any  hour  of  the  night  that  she  might  wake 
and  cry  out. 

I  then  determined  to  omit  the  patting,  and  endeavour  to 
bring  on  sleep  by  singing  only.  The  time  was  at  first 
lengthened,  then  greatly  shortened.  I  now  found  it  pos- 
sible (sixth  to  seventh  month)  to  put  her  to  sleep,  when 
she  waked  in  the  dark,  by  a  simple  refrain  repeated 
monotonously  two  or  three  times.  In  the  meantime  she 
was  developing  active  attention,  and  resisted  all  endeavours 
of  her  nurse  and  mother,  who  had  been  separated  from 
her  through  illness,  very  stubbornly  for  hours,  while  she 
would  go  to  sleep  for  myself,  even  when  most  restless, 
in  from  fifteen  to  thirty  minutes.  This  result  required 
sometimes  firm  holding  down  of  the  infant  and  a  deter- 
mined expression  of  countenance. 

At  the  end  of  the  year,  this  treatment  being  regular, 
she  would  voluntarily  throw  herself  in  the  old  position 
at  a  single  word  from  me,  and  go  to  sleep,  if  only  patted 

^  I  found  by  accident,  in  this  connection,  the  curious  fact  that  a  single  flash 
of  bright  light  would  often  put  H.  immediately  to  sleep  when  all  other  pro- 
cesses were  futile.  In  her  fifth  month  I  despaired  one  evening,  after  nearly  an 
hour's  vain  effort,  and  lighted  the  gas  at  a  brilliant  flash  unintentionally.  She 
closed  her  eyes  by  the  usual  reflex,  and  did  not  open  them  again,  sleeping 


Sciisori-motor  Suggestioji.  117 

uniformly,  in  from  four  to  ten  minutes.  This  continued 
through  the  second  year  ;  even  when  she  was  so  restless 
that  her  nurse  was  unable  to  keep  her  from  gaining  her 
feet,  and  when  she  screamed  if  forced  by  her  to  lie  down. 
The  sight  of  myself  was  sufficient  to  make  her  quiet ;  and 
in  five  minutes,  rarely  more,  she  was  sound  asleep.  I 
found  it  of  service,  when  she  was  teething  and  in  pain, 
to  be  able  thus  to  give  her  quiet,  healthful  sleep. 

This  illustrates,  I  think,  as  conclusively  as  could  be 
desired,  the  passage  of  purely  physiological  over  into 
sensory  suggestion  ;  and  this  is  all  that  I  care,  in  this 
connection,  to  emphasize. 

Food  and  ClotJiing  Suggestion.  —  H.  gave  unmistak- 
able signs  of  response  to  the  sight  of  her  food-bottle  as 
early,  at  least,  as  the  fourth  month,  probably  a  fortnight 
earlier.  The  reactions  were  a  kind  of  general  movement 
toward  the  bottle,  especially  with  the  hands,  a  brightening 
of  the  face,  and  crowing  sounds.  It  is  curious  that  the 
rubber  on  the  bottle  seemed  to  be  the  point  of  identifica- 
tion, the  bottle  being  generally  not  responded  to  when 
the  rubber  was  removed.  This  was  also  true  of  E.,  to 
whom  the  rubber  alone  without  the  bottle  became  a 
remarkable  quieting  agent,  as  I  have  already  mentioned. 
The  sight  of  the  bottle,  also,  was  suggestive  much  earlier 
than  the  touch  of  it  with  her  hands. 

H.  began  to  show  a  vague  sense  of  the  use  of  her 
articles  of  clothing  about  the  fifth  month,  responding  at 
the  proper  time,  when  being  clothed,  by  ducking  her  head, 

soundly  and  long.  I  afterwards  resorted  to  this  method  on  several  occasions, 
carefully  shielding  her  eyes  from  the  direct  light  rays,  and  it  generally,  but 
not  always,  succeeded.  Shortly  after  noticing  this  in  the  columns  of  Science 
(Feb.  27,  1 891),  I  heard  from  a  prominent  psychologist  that  his  wife  could 
confirm  the  observation  from  experience  with  her  own  children. 


1 1 8  Suggestion. 

extending  her  liancl  or  withdrawing  it.  About  this  time 
she  also  showed  signs  of  joy  at  the  appearance  of  her 
mittens,  hood,  and  cloak,  before  going  out. 

II.  Siiggestiojis  of  Personality.  —  It  was  a  poet,  no 
doubt,  who  first  informed  us  that  the  infant  inherits  a 
peculiar  sensibility  for  its  mother's  face,  —  a  readiness 
to  answer  it  with  a  smile.  This  is  all  poetic  fancy.  It  is 
true  that  the  infant  does  smile  very  early ;  E.  clearly 
smiled  at  me  on  her  seventh  day  and  at  her  mother 
on  the  ninth.  But  it  is  probably  a  purely  reflex  indica- 
tion of  ao'reeable  orcranic  sensation.  When  the  child  does 
begin  to  show  partiality  for  mother  or  nurse,  it  is  because 
the  kind  treatment  it  has  already  experienced  in  connec- 
tion with  the  face  has  already  brought  out  the  same  smile 
before  in  this  organic  way ;  the  mother's  face,  that  is, 
grows  to  suggest  the  smile.  At  first  it  is  not  the  face 
alone,  but  the  personality,  the  presence,  to  which  the  child 
responds ;  and  of  more  special  suggestion,  the  voice  is 
first  effectual,  then  touch,  as  in  the  case  of  sleep  above,  and 
then  sight.  Such  suggestions  are  among  the  most  impor- 
tant of  infancy,  serving  as  elements  in  the  growth  of  the 
consciousness  of  self  and  of  external  reality,  as  we  shall 
have  occasion  to  see  later  on. 

Delaying  for  the  moment  the  further  analysis  of  this 
remarkable  class  of  suggestions,  the  question  occurs,  are 
not  these  so-called  '  suggestions '  simply  cases  of  the  asso- 
ciation of  ideas  ?  I  think  we  are  warranted  in  answering, 
'  No '  ;  for  the  reason  that  it  is  not  an  associated  idea  that 
is  brought  up  ;  unless  we  are  prepared  to  enlarge  the  ordi- 
nary conception  of  association  to  include  phenomena  of 
the  vaguest  psychological  meaning.  The  muscular  move- 
ment is  produced  without   the   production   of   an    idea  of 


Sensori-motor  Suggestion.  1 1 9 

that  movement,  largely  through  native  pathways  of  dis- 
charge, or  by  the  production  of  organic  conditions,  such 
as  sleep,  which  involve  muscular  conditions.  Can  we  say 
that  the  sleep  suggestions  first  bring  up  an  idea  or  image 
of  the  sleep  condition,  or  that  the  bottle  brings  up  an 
idea  of  the  movements  of  grasping,  or  even  of  the  sweet 
taste  ?  I  think  the  case  is  more  direct.  The  energy  of 
stimulation  passes  over  into  the  motor  reaction  through 
the  medium  of  the  conscious  state ;  although  the  con- 
scious state  is  undoubtedly  enveloped  in  an  envelope  or 
fringe  of  organic  and  muscular  sensation  which  is  of 
marked  hedonic  quality.  Further,  as  will  appear  clearer 
below,  it  is  not  an  association  plus  a  suggestion,  or  an 
association  plus  an  association,  as  current  atomistic  doc- 
trines of  association  would  lead  us  to  expect.  We  cannot 
say  that  pleasure  or  pain  always  intervenes  between  the 
present  state  of  consciousness  and  the  motor  reaction, 
i.e.y  mother's  face,  pleasure  recalled,  expression  of  pleasure, 
or  present  bottle,  sweet  taste,  movements  to  reach.  I 
believe  all  this  is  quite  artificial  and  unnatural.  The  most 
that  can  be  said  is  that  the  conscious  state  as  a  whole, 
with  its  hedonic  colouring,  serves  to  bring  about  a  modi- 
fication of  the  reaction,  whether  it  be  a  native  one,  or  one 
established  by  association  or  habit. ^ 

The  elements  are  as  before  for  physiological  suggestion, 
except  that  the  reaction  begins  with  a  clearly  conscious 
process  at  sg  (Fig.  XL),  and  the  child  is  getting  associa- 
tions between  sg  and  mc. 

The  phenomenon  of  'personality-suggestion,'  to  which 
we  may  now  return,  is  so  important  in  the  growth  of  the 

1  Ochorowicz  describes  the  same  class  of  phenomena  as  '  ideorganic 
associations  based  on  habitude,'  Mental  Suggestion,  p.  232. 


1 20  Suggestion. 

child's  consciousness  of  himself,  of  his  belief  in  realities 
about  him,  and  of  his  social  life,  that  it  should  be  closely 
scrutinized.  This  is  the  more  important  because  such  an 
analysis  has  never  been  made  upon  the  basis  of  actual  ob- 
servation   of  children.     The  treatment  which    follows    is 


Fig.  XL  — Sensori-motor  Suggestion. 

based  upon  most  detailed  and  watchful  inspection  of  H. 
and  E.,  together  with  careful  but  less  intimate  observation 
of  two  other  young  children,  one  of  them  a  boy,  with  es- 
pecial reference  to  the  development  of  the  sense  of  their 
own  relation  to  the  persons  who  moved  about  them.^ 

As  outcome  of  this  kind  of  observation,  and  with  no 
intermixture  of  interpretation,  which  may  be  now  left  over, 
I  find  no  less  than  four  phases  of  attitude  involved  in  what 
afterwards  becomes  the  so-called  'social  sense'  in  the  child. 
I  say  'afterwards  becomes,'  because  all  of  them  belong  in 
the  'projective '2  stage  of  the  child's  sense  of  self,  i.e.,  they 
all  go  to  furnish  data  which  he  afterwards  appropriates  to 
himself  as  'subject.'  These  four  phases  are  indescribably 
subtle  and  indescribably  intermixed  in  the  subjective  e7i- 
semble  of  the  growing  child.  So  much  so  that  I  shall  not 
attempt  in  all  cases  to  cite  actual   situations   to   justify 

^  Some  observations  on  the  presence  of  something  similar  to  this  class  of 
suggestions  in  animals  have  already  been  given  above,  p.  19;   see  also  p.  126. 
2  See  above,  p.  18  f. 


Sens ori-mo tor  Suggestion.  121 

each  point :  rather,  the  view  I  take  rests  upon  innumerable 
situations,  and  their  differences  from  one  another.  Just 
as  one  is  utterly  unable  to  give  examples  of  his  own 
phases  of  attitude  expressive  of  the  nuances  of  meaning 
which  the  actions  of  others  bring  out  of  him,  so,  entirely 
a  matter  of  insight  and  intuition  must  his  sense  be  of 
what  is  in  the  child's  mind  in  the  various  social  situations 
which  confront  him  from  day  to  day.  Nevertheless,  the 
drift  of  the  infant's  development  is  very  clear  to  the  sym- 
pathetic observer ;  and  I  think  the  instances  which  I  cite 
will  be  sufficient  to  excite  in  all  those  familiar  with  little 
children  a  sense  of  the  truth  of  the  general  portrayal. 

I.  The  first  thing  in  the  environment  of  the  infant 
which  it  notes  —  apart  from  the  ordinary  fixed  and  static 
stimulations,  such  as  sounds,  lights,  etc. — are  movements. 
The  first  attempts  of  the  infant  at  anything  like  steady 
attention  are  directed  to  moving  things  —  a  swaying  cur- 
tain, a  moving  light,  a  stroking  touch,  etc.  And  further 
than  this,  the  moving  things  soon  become  more  than 
objects  of  curiosity;  these  things  are  just  the  things  that 
affect  him  for  pleasure  or  pain.  It  is  movement  that 
brings  him  his  food,  movement  that  regulates  the  stages 
of  his  bath,  movement  that  dresses  him  comfortably, 
movement  that  sings  to  him  and  rocks  him  to  sleep.  In 
that  complex  of  sensations,  the  nurse,  the  feature  of 
moment  to  him,  of  immediate  satisfaction,  or  redemption 
from  pain,  is  this  :  movements  come  to  succour  him. 
Change  in  his  bodily  feeling  is  the  vital  requirement  of 
his  life,  for  by  it  the  rhythm  of  his  vegetative  existence  is 
secured  ;  and  these  changes  are  accompanied  and  secured 
always  in  the  moving  presence  of  the  one  he  sees  and 
feels  about  him.     This,   I  take  it,   is  the   first   and   great 


122  Suggestio7i, 

association  of  the  infant  with  other  persons,  the  earliest 
reflection  in  his  consciousness  of  the  world  of  personali- 
ties about  him.  At  this  stage  his  'personality-suggestion' 
is  this  pam-moveme7it-pleasure  psychosis  :  to  this  he  re- 
acts with  a  smile,  and  a  crow,  and  a  kick.^ 

Many  facts  tend  to  bear  me  out  in  this  position.  My 
child  cried  when  I  handled  her  in  the  dark,  although  I 
imitated  the  nurse's  movements  as  closely  as  possible. 
She  tolerated  a  strange  presence  as  long  as  it  remained 
quietly  in  its  place :  but  let  it  move,  and  especially  let  it 
usurp  any  of  the  pieces  of  movement-business  of  the  nurse 
or  mother,  and  her  protests  were  emphatic.  The  move- 
ments tended  to  bring  the  strange  elements  of  a  new  face 
into  the  vital  association,  pain-movement-pleasure,  and  so 
to  disturb  its  familiar  course :  this  constituted  it  a  strange 
'personality.' 

It  is  astonishing,  also,  what  new  accidental  elements 
may  become  parts  of  this  association.  Part  of  a  move- 
ment, a  gesture,  a  peculiar  habit  of  the  nurse,  may  become 
sufficient  to  give  assurance  of  the  welcome  presence  and 
the  pleasures  which  the  presence  brings.  Two  notes  of 
my  song  in  the  night  stood  for  my  presence  to  H.,  and  no 
song  from  any  one  else  could  replace  it.  A  lighted  match 
stopped  the  crying  of  E.  for  food,^  although  it  was  but  a 
signal  for  a  process  of  food-preparation  lasting  several 
minutes  :  and  a  simple  light  never  stopped  her  crying 
under  any  other  circumstances.  So  with  this  first  start 
in  the  sense   of  personality  we  find  also  reasons  for  the 

1  Undoubtedly  this  association  gets  some  of  its  value  from  the  otlier  similar 
one  in  which  the  movements  are  the  infant's  own.  It  is  by  movement  that 
he  gets  rid  of  pain  and  secures  pleasure. 

'■^  Observations  made  in  her  fourteenth  week. 


Sensori-motor  Suo-o-cstion . 


^>^> 


123 


differences  of  different  personalities  ;  but  this  constitutes 
the  next  phase. 

2.  It  is  evident  that  the  sense  of  another's  presence 
thus  felt  in  the  infant's  consciousness  rests,  as  all  associa- 
tions rest,  upon  regularity  or  repetition :  his  sense  of 
expectancy  is  aroused  whenever  the  chain  of  events  is 
started.  And  this  is  embodied  at  this  stage  largely  in 
two  indications  :  the  face  and  the  voice.^  But  it  is  easy 
to  see  that  this  is  a  very  meagre  sense  of  personality;  a 
moving  machine  which  brought  pain  and  alleviated  suffer- 
ing would  serve  as  well.  So  the  child  begins  to  learn  in 
addition  the  fact  that  persons  are  in  a  measure  individ- 
ual in  their  treatment  of  him,  and  hence  that  personality 
has  elements  of  uncertainty  or  hn'egnlarity  about  it.  This 
growing  sense  is  very  clear  to  one  who  watches  an  infant 
in  its  second  half-year.  Sometimes  its  mother  gives  a 
biscuit,  but  som.etimes  she  does  not.  Sometimes  the 
father  smiles  and  tosses  the  child ;  sometimes  he  does 
not.  And  the  child  looks  for  signs  of  these  varying 
moods  and  methods  of  treatment.  Its  new  pains  of  dis- 
appointment arise  directly  on  the  basis  of  that  former 
sense  of  regular  personal  presence  upon  which  its  expec- 
tancy went  forth. 

This  new  element  of  the  child's  *  social  sense'  becomes, 
at  one  period  of  its  development,  quite  the  controlling  ele- 
ment. Its  action  in  the  presence  of  the  persons  of  the 
household  becomes  hesitating  and  watchful.  Especially 
does  it  watch  the  face  for  any  expressive   indications  of 

1  I  have  special  observations  on  H.'s  responses  to  changes  in  facial  expres- 
sion up  to  the  age  of  twenty  months.  Her  changes  of  attitude  indicated  most 
subtle  sensibility  to  these  differences  —  and  normal  children  all  do,  I  think. 
Animals  show  the  same  remarkable  '  projective  intuition,'  if  the  expression  be 
allowed. 


1 2  4  Suggestion . 

what  treatment  is  to  be  expected  ;  for  facial  expression  is 
now  the  most  regular  as  well  as  the  most  delicate  indica- 
tion. It  is  unable  to  anticipate  the  treatment  in  detail, 
and  it  has  not  of  course  learned  any  principles  of  interpre- 
tation of  the  conduct  of  mother  or  father  lying  deeper 
than  the  details.  It  is  just  here,  I  think,  that  imitation 
arises,  as  I  shall  show  later,^  and  becomes  so  important 
in  the  child's  life.  This  is  imitation's  opportunity.  The 
infant  waits  to  see  how  others  act,  because  its  own  weal 
and  woe  depends  upon  this  *  how '  ;  and  inasmuch  as  it 
knows  not  what  to  anticipate,  its  mind  is  open  to  every 
suggestion  of  movement.  Its  attention  dwells  upon  de- 
tails, and  by  the  regular  principle  of  motor  reaction  which 
imitation  expresses,  it  acts  these  suggestions  out. 

All  through  the  child's  second  year,  and  longer,  his 
sense  of  the  persons  around  him  is  in  this  stage.  The 
incessant  'why.'*'  with  which  he  greets  any  action  affect- 
ing him,  or  any  information  given  him,  is  witness  to  the 
simple  puzzle  of  the  apparent  capriciousness  of  persons. 
Of  course  he  cannot  understand  *  why '  :  so  the  simple 
fact  to  him  is  that  mama  will  or  won't,  he  knows  not 
beforehand  which. 

But  in  all  this  period  there  is  germinating  in  his  con- 
sciousness—  and  this  very  uncertainty  is  an  important 
element  of  it  —  the  seed  of  a  far-reaching  thought.  His 
sense  of  persons  —  moving,  pleasure-or-pain-giving,  uncer- 
tain but  self-directing,  persons  —  is  now  to  become  a  sense 
of  agency,  of  power,  which  is  yet  not  the  power  of  the 
regular-moving  door  on  its  hinges  or  the  rhythmic  swing- 
ing of  the  pendulum  of  the  clock.  The  sense  of  personal 
actuation,  'projective  agency,'  is  now  forming,  and  it  again 

1  Below,  Chap.  XI.,  §  3. 


Scnsori-niotor  Suggestion.  125 

is  potent  for  still  further  development  of  the  social  con- 
sciousness. For  he  begins  to  grow  capricious  himself,  and 
to  feel  that  he  can  be  so  whenever  he  likes.  Suggestion 
begins  to  lose  the  regularity  of  its  working ;  or  to  become 
negative  and  *  contrary '  in  its  effects.  At  this  period 
it  is  that  obedience  begins  to  grow  hard,  and  its  mean- 
ing begins  to  dawn  upon  the  child  as  the  great  reality. 
It  means  the  subjection  of  his  own  agency,  his  own  liberty 
to  be  capricious,  to  the  agency  and  liberty  of  some  one 
else. 

3.  With  all  this,  the  child's  distinction  between  and  among 
the  persons  who  constantly  come  into  contact  with  him 
grows  on  apace,  in  spite  of  the  element  of  irregularity  of  the 
general  fact  of  personality.  As  before  he  learned  the  dif- 
ference between  one  presence  and  another, — a  difference 
which  was  overcome  in  the  discovery  that  every  presence 
is  of  irregular  value;  so  now  he  learns  the  difference 
between  one  cJiaractcr  and  another  —  the  regularity  of 
personal  agency,  as  opposed  to  the  regularity  of  mere  asso- 
ciations of  movement  and  to  the  irregularity  of  the  ap- 
parently capricious.  Every  character  is  more  or  less 
regular  in  its  irregularity.  It  has  its  tastes  and  modes 
of  action,  its  temperament  and  type  of  command.  This 
the  child  learns  late  in  the  second  year  and  thereafter. 
He  behaves  differently  when  the  father  is  in  the  room. 
He  is  quick  to  obey  one  person,  slow  to  obey  another.  He 
cries  aloud,  pulls  his  companions,  and  behaves  reprehen- 
sibly  generally,  when  no  adult  is  present  but  his  nurse, 
who  has  no  authority  to  punish  him.  This  stage  in  his 
'knowledge  of  man'  leads  to  those  active  differences  of 
conduct  on  his  part  which  make  imitation,  and  the  dis- 
cipline of  obedience,  a  sword  with  two  edges,  one  for  good 


126  Stcggestio7i. 

and  one  for  evil.  This  general  appreciation  of  character 
together  with  the  full-blown  social  feeling,  which  consti- 
tutes the  fourth  phase  in  my  division,  may  be  left  for 
later  discussion,  as  well  as  the  part  played  by  this  kind  of 
suggestion  in  the  genesis  of  the  moral  sense.^ 

To  sum  up :  'personality-suggestion'  is  the  general  term 
for  the  stimulations  to  activity  which  the  child  gets  from 
persons.  It  develops  through  three  or  four  roughly  dis- 
tinguished 'stages,'  all  of  which  illustrate  what  I  have 
called  his  'projective'  sense  of  personality;  namely,  i.  a 
bare  distinction,  on  the  ground  of  peculiar  pain-movement- 
pleasure  complexes,  of  pc7'sons  front  tJiings ;  2.  a  sense  of 
the  irregularity  or  capriciousness  of  the  behaviour  of  these 
persons,  which  is  the  germ  of  his  sense  of  agency^  as  op- 
posed to  the  regular  causal  series  of  conditions  which 
things  go  through  ;  3.  his  distinction,  vaguely  felt  but  re- 
acted to  with  great  exactness,  between  the  characteristic 
modes  of  behaviour  or  personal  character  of  different  per- 
sons ;  4.  after  his  sense  of  his  own  subject-agency  arises 
by  a  process  of  imitation,  he  gets  what  is  really  social feel- 
uig :  the  sense  of  others  as  'ejective,'  that  is,  as  like  and 
equal  to  himself.^ 

III.  Deliberative  Suggestion. — By  'deliberative  sugges- 
tion '  I  mean  a  state  of  mind  in  which  co-ordinate  sense- 

1  Below,  Chap.  XL,  §  3. 

2  The  reader  may  notice  in  this  connection  the  section  below  on  *  bashful- 
ness,'  which  is  found  to  be  a  native  organic  response  to  the  presence  of  per- 
sons, considered  as 'projects'  of  a  personal  kind.  It  is  curious  to  note  that, 
besides  general  gregariousness  which  many  animals  show  in  common,  they 
have  in  many  instances  special  sense  indications  of  the  presence  of  creatures  of 
their  own  kind  or  of  other  kinds.  Dogs  and  cats  each  recognize  both  dogs  and 
cats  by  S77iell.  Horses  seem  to  be  guided  by  sight.  Fowls  are  notoriously 
blind  to  shapes  of  fowls,  but  depend  on  the  cries  which  they  hear  of  their  kind 
or  their  young. 


Scnsori-motor  Stcggcstion.  1 2  7 

stimuli  meet,  confront,  oppose,  further,  one  another.  Yet 
I  do  not  mean  'deliberation'  in  the  full-blown  volitional 
sense,  but  suggestion  that  appears  deliberative,  while  still 
inside  the  reactive  consciousness  and  still  representing  a 
single  reaction  upon  a  single  state  of  consciousness.  In 
real  deliberation,  as  appears  below,  there  are  two  or  more 
pictured  alternatives,  upon  the  conscious  co-ordination  of 
which  action  follows.  But  here  the  different  elements  are 
ingredients  in  a  single  sensory  complex,  — one  suggestion, 
—  and  the  motor  reaction  waits  upon  the  issue  of  the 
whole.  The  competition  of  processes  is  probably  in  large 
measure  subcortical.  So  the  state  is  still  to  be  classed  as 
sensori-motor,  not  ideo-motor,  since  it  does  not  require 
.intelligent  memory  and  representation.  The  last  three 
months  of  the  child's  first  year  are,  I  think,  clearly 
given  over  to  this  kind  of  consciousness.  Motor  stimula- 
tions have  multiplied,  the  emotional  life  is  budding  forth 
in  a  variety  of  promising  traits,  the  material  of  conscious 
character  is  present;  but  the  'ribs'  of  mental  structure 
may  still  be  seen  through,  response  answering  to  appeal 
in  a  complex  but  yet  mechanical  way.  The  child  lacks 
self-consciousness,  self-decision,  self  in  any  form. 

As  an  illustration  of  what  I  mean,  I  may  record  the  fol- 
lowing case  of  deliberative  suggestion  from  H.'s  thirteenth 
month  :  it  was  more  instructive  to  me  than  whole  books 
would  be  on  the  theory  of  the  conflict  of  impulses.  When 
about  eight  months  old,  H.  formed  the  peculiar  habit  of 
suddenly  scratching  the  face  of  her  nurse  or  mother  with 
her  nails.  It  became  fixed  in  her  memory,  probably  be- 
cause of  the  unusual  facial  expression  of  pain,  reproof,  etc., 
which  followed  it,  until  the  close  proximity  of  any  one's 
face  was  sufficient  suggestion  to  her  to  give  it  a  violent 


1 28  Stcggestion. 

scratch.  In  order  to  break  up  this  habit,  I  began  to 
punish  her  by  taking  at  once  the  hand  with  which  she 
scratched  and  'snapping'  her  fingers  with  my  own  first 
finger  hard  enough  to  be  painful.  For  about  four  weeks 
this  seemed  to  have  no  effect,  probably  because  I  only  saw 
her  a  small  part  of  the  time,  and  only  then  did  she  suffer 
the  punishment.  But  I  then  observed,  and  those  who 
were  with  her  most  reported,  that  she  only  scratched  once 
at  a  time,  and  grew  very  solemn  and  quiet  for  some  mo- 
ments afterwards,  as  if  thinking  deeply  ;  and  soon  after 
this  climax  was  reached  she  would  scratch  once  impul- 
sively, be  punished,  and  weep  profusely,  then  become  as 
grave  as  a  deacon,  looking  me  in  the  face.  I  would  then 
deliberately  put  my  cheek  very  close  to  her,  and  she  would 
sit  gazing  at  it  in  '  deep  thought '  for  two  or  even  three 
minutes,  hardly  moving  a  muscle  the  whole  time,  and  then 
either  suddenly  scratch  my  face  and  be  punished  again,  or 
turn  to  something  (noise,  object,  watch-chain,  etc.)  which  I 
was  careful  enough  to  provide  in  order  to  aid  her  by  drawing 
off  the  attention.  Having  scratched,  she  began  to  cry,  in 
anticipation  of  the  punishment.  Gradually  the  scratching 
became  more  rare.  She  seldom  yielded  to  the  temptation 
after  being  punished,  and  so  the  habit  entirely  disappeared. 
I  may  add  that  her  mother  and  myself  endeavoured  to 
induce  a  different  reaction  by  taking  the  child's  other  hand 
and  gently  stroking  the  face  which  she  had  scratched. 
This  movement  in  time  replaced  the  other  completely,  and 
the  soft  stroking  became  one  of  her  most  spontaneous 
expressions  of  affection. 

Now  the  first  act  of  scratching  was  probably  accidental, 
one  of  the  spontaneous  reactions  or  physiological  sugges- 
tions  so   common  with   an   infant's   hands ;   it  passed,  by 


Scnsori-motor  Siiggcsfion.  129 

reason  of  its  peculiar  associations,  into  a  sensori-motor 
reaction  whenever  the  presence  of  a  face  acted  as  sugges- 
tion,—  so  far  a  strong  direct  stimulus  to  the  motor  centres. 
Then  came  the  pain, — a  stimulus  to  the  inhibition  of  the 
foregoing,  not  by  exciting  a  clear  memory,  on  the  next 
occasion,  but  by  working  itself  directly  into  the  suggesting 
psychosis,  and  thus  reducing  the  motor  tendency.  For 
a  time  the  tendency  remained  strong  enough,  however, 
to  cause  the  reaction  ;  then  there  followed  an  apparent 
balance  between  the  two,  and  finally  the  pain  element 
predominated  in  the  suggestion,  and  the  reaction  was  per- 
manently inhibited.  The  stroking  reaction  gained  all  the 
strength  of  violent  and  intense  association  with  the  ele- 
ments of  this  mental  conflict,  and  was  thus  soon  fixed  and 
permanent. 

Taking  this  as  a  typical  case  of  'deliberative  suggestion,' 
—  and  I  could  instance  many  others  from  H.'s  life  history 
and  from  E.'s,  —  two  inferences  may  be  brought  out  in 
passing :  tJicre  is  notJiing  Jiere  that  requires  volition,  mean- 
ing by  *  volition  '  a  new  influence  of  any  kind,  — active  con- 
ciousness  ;  if  we  do  call  it  so,  we  simply  apply  a  different 
term  to  phenomena  which  in  their  simplicity  we  call  by 
other  names.  And,  second,  suggestion  is  as  original  a 
motor  stimulus  as  pleasure  ajtd  pain.  Here  they  are  in 
direct  conflict.  Can  we  say  that  H.  balanced  the  pleasure 
of  scratching  and  the  pain  of  punishment,  and  decided 
the  case  on  this  egoistic  basis  ?  What  pleasure  did  the 
scratching  have  more  than  any  other  muscular  exercise  ? 
It  was  simply  a  sensori-motor  habit  which  the  pain  inhibi- 
tion tended  to  break  up. 

So  also,  apart  from  pathological  aboulia,  which  is  de- 
scribed   later  on,   we  find   a  corresponding   condition  in 

K 


1 30  Suggestion. 

adult  life.  As  I  have  said  elsewhere,  "there  is  a  state 
of  conflict  and  hindrance  among  presentations  which  is 
mechanical  in  its  issue,  ...  so  states  of  vexation,  divided 
counsel,  conflicting  impulse,  and  hasty  decision  against 
one's  desire  for  deliberate  choice.  We  often  find  our- 
selves drawn  violently  apart,  precipitated  through  a  whirl 
of  suggested  courses  into  a  course  which  we  feel  unwilling 
to  acknowledsre  as  our  own.''^  The  conditions  of  delibera- 
tion  are  there,  but  without  the  fact  of  it. 


§  4.    Ideo-motor  Suggestiott, 

By  ideo-motor  suggestion  I  mean  the  condition  in  which 
the  stimulus  is  a  clearly  pictured  idea,  a  presentation  or 
object  with  all  its  'meaning,'  or  a  revived  image  of  memory 
or  imaoination. 

o 

Imitation?  —  For  a  long  period  after  the  child  has 
learned  to  use  all  his  senses,  and  after  his  memory  is 
well  developed,  he  lacks  conscious  imitation  entirely.  I 
have  been  quite  unable  with  my  children  to  confirm  the 
results  of  Preyer,  who  attributes  imitation  to  his  child  at 
the  age  of  three  to  four  months. 

In  support  of  the  assertion  that  imitation  is  rather  late 
in  its  rise,  the  following  experiences  may  be  reported. 
As  a  necessary  caution,  the  rule  was  made  that  no  single 
performance  should  be  considered  real  imitation  unless  it 
could  be  brought  out  again  under  similar  circumstances. 
This  rule  is  necessary,  I  think,  merely  for  caution,  since 

1  Handbook,  II.,  p.  299.  This  kind  of  complex  suggestion,  however,  un- 
doubtedly serves  to  give  a  ready  organic  basis  for  the  earlier  and  more  obscure 
acts  of  volition,  which  are  described  later  on  (Chap.  XIII.  §  4). 

2  In  this  chapter  the  word  '  imitation '  is  used  to  denote  '  conscious '  imita- 
tion—  its  usual  popular  sense  —  in  distinction  from  the  phylogenetic  sense  in 
which  it  is  used  in  Chap.  IX.  below. 


Ideo-motor  Suggestion.  131 

the  *  copy '  set  for  imitation  is  likely  to  be  some  simple 
movement  of  lips,  hands,  etc.,  which  the  child  has  made 
himself  before,  and  is  likely  to  make  again.  It  is  possible 
also  from  the  mere  fact  of  dynamogeny  that  the  motor 
discharge  in  shedding  itself  outward  would  tend  in  a  gen- 
eral way  to  find  its  most  permeable  native  pathway  toward 
the  muscles  which  repeat  the  copy,  since  the  movements 
are  natural  and  easy.  At  any  rate,  such  cases,  if  they 
exist,  shade  up  gradually  into  conscious  imitations. ^ 

It  is  probable,  therefore,  that  cases  of  imitation  recorded 
as  happening  as  early  as  the  third  month  are  merely  coinci- 
dences. For  example,  I  recorded  an  apparent  imitation  by 
H.,  of  closing  the  hand,  as  late  as  May  22  (beginning  of  the 
ninth  month),  but  afterwards  I  wrote,  "  experiment  not  con- 
firmed with  repeated  trials  running  through  four  succeed- 
ing days."  H.'s  first  clear  imitation  was  on  May  24,  in 
knocking  a  bunch  of  keys  against  a  vase,  as  she  saw  me 
do  it,  in  order  to  produce  the  bell-like  sound.  This  she 
repeated  over  and  over  again,  and  tried  to  reproduce  it  a 
week  later,  when,  from  lapse  of  time,  she  had  partly  for- 
gotten how  to  use  the  keys.  But  on  the  same  day,  May 
24,  other  efforts  to  bring  out  imitation  failed  signally,  i.e., 
with  more  or  less  articulate  sounds,  movements  of  the  lips 
(Preyer's  experiments),  and  opening  and  closing  of  the 
hands.  Ten  days  later,  however,  she  imitated  closing 
the  hand  on  three  different  occasions.  And  a  week 
afterward  she  imitated  movements  of  the  lips  and  certain 
sounds,  as/^,  ma,  etc.^     From  this  time  forward  the  phe- 

1  See  the  remarks  on  the  question  of  '  instinctive  imitation,'  below,  Chap. 
XIII.,  §  3. 

2  The  majority  of  recorded  observations  agree  in  making  vocal  imitations 
later  than  visual-movement  imitations.  Egger,  loc.  cit.,  p.  8  ;  Tracy,  Infant 
Psychology,  p.   57   (for  citations)  ;   Stevenson,  Science,  March  3,  1 893.     The 


132  Suggestion. 

nomenon  seemed  extended  to  a  very  wide  range  of  activi- 
ties, and  began  to  assume  the  immense  importance  which 
it  always  comes  to  have  in  the  life  of  the  young  child. 

When  the  imitative  impulse  does  come,  it  comes  in 
earnest.  For  many  months  after  its  rise  it  may  be  called, 
perhaps,  the  controlling  impulse,  apart  from  the  ordinary 
life  processes.  As  a  phenomenon,  it  is  too  familiar  to  need 
description.  Its  importance  in  the  growth  of  the  child's 
mind  is  largely  in  connection  with  the  development  of 
language  and  of  voluntary  movement  generally. 

The  phenomena  may  be  divided  into  two  general  classes, 
called  simple  imitation  "^xvdi persistent  imitation}  By  'sim- 
ple imitations,'  reactions  are  characterized,  in  which  the 
movement  does  not  really  imitate,  but  is  the  best  the  child 
can  do.  He  does  not  try  to  improve  by  making  a  second 
attempt.  This  is  evidently  a  case  of  simple  sensori-motor 
suggestion,  and  is  peculiar  psychologically  only  because  of 
the  more  or  less  remote  approximation  the  reaction  has  to 
the  movement  which  the  child  copies. 

The  reaction  at  which  imitative  suggestion  aims  is  one 
which  will  reprodnce  the  stimulating  impression,  and  so 
tend  to  perpetuate  itself.  When  a  child  strikes  the  com- 
bination required,  he  is  never  tired  working  it.  H.  found 
endless  delight  in  putting  the  rubber  on  a  pencil  and  off 
again,  each  act  being  a  new  stimulus  to  the  eye.     This  is 

first  vocal  imitation  of  my  other  child,  E.,  was  observed  in  her  eleventh  month, 
when  she  tried  to  say  '  tick,'  in  reference  to  the  clock,  after  her  mother,  to- 
gether with  *■  ps '  for  '  pussy,'  and  ^  p'o  '  for  *  pop.' 

^  Preyers  distinction  between  *  spontaneous '  and  '  deliberate '  imitations 
(^Senses  and  Will,  p.  293).  He  is  wrong  in  making  both  classes  voluntary. 
The  contrary  is  proved  for  spontaneous  imitation  by  the  fact  that  many  ele- 
ments of  facial  expression  are  never  acquired  by  blind  children.  We  could 
hardly  say  that  facial  expression  was  a  voluntary  acquisition,  however  gradually 
it  may  have  been  acquired. 


Ideo-inotor  S2iggcstiou.  133 

specially  noticeable  in  children's  early  efforts  at  speech. 
They  react  all  wrong  when  they  first  attack  a  new  word, 
but  gradually  get  it  moderately  well,  and  then  sound  it 
over  and  over  in  endless  monotony.  The  essential  thing, 
then,  in  imitation,  over  and  above  simple  ideo-motor  sug- 
gestion, is  that  tJie  stimulus  starts  a  viotor  process  wJiicJi 
tends  to  rep7'oduce  the  stimulus  and,  througJi  it,  the  motor 
process  again.  From  the  physiological  side  we  have  a 
circular  activity  —  sensor,  motor;  sensor,  motor:  and 
from  the  psychological  side  we  have  a  similar  circle, 
—  reality,  image,  movement ;  reality,  image,  movement, 
etc. 

The  square  to  the  left  (Fig.  XII.)  is  the  first  act  of  imita- 
tion ;   the  movement   {int)  now   stimulates   (dotted  line  d) 


^-. 


\a   \Q>' 


Fig.  XII.  —  Imitation. 

the  eye  again  {sg^),  giving  the  second  square,  which  by  its 
movement  (int^)  furnishes  yet  another  stimulus  (dotted 
line  d)  ;  and  so  on. 

By  '  persistent  imitation  '  is  meant  the  child's  effort,  by 
repetition,  to  improve  his  imitations.  Its  extreme  impor- 
tance justifies  its  separate  discussion  in  a  later  place. ^ 

Summing  up  the  ground  which  we  have  gone  over  so  far 

1  Chapter  XIII.  The  general  discussion  of  the  position  of  imitation  in  the 
mental  life,  especially  its  phylogenetic  value,  is  reserved  for  later  chapters 
(Chaps.  IX.-XIII.). 


1 34  Suggestion. 

in  this  chapter,  the  progress  of  suggestion  may  be  seen 
by  the  following  brief  definitions  :  — 

1.  Physiological  suggestion  is  the  tendency  of  a  reflex 
or  secondary  automatic  process  to  get  itself  associated  with 
and  influenced  by  stimulating  processes  of  a  physiological 
and  vaguely  sensory  sort.  Perhaps  the  plainest  case  of  it, 
on  a  large  scale  in  animal  life,  is  seen  in  the  decay  of 
instincts  when  no  longer  suited  to  the  creature's  needs 
and  environment. 

2.  Sensori-niotor  and  Ideo-motor  siiggestio7i  is  the  ten- 
dency of  all  nervous  reactions  to  adapt  themselves  to  new 
stimulations,  both  sensory  and  ideal,  in  such  a  way  as  to 
be  more  ready  for  the  repetition  or  continuance  of  these 
stimulations. 

3.  Deliberative  suggestion  is  the  tendency  of  different 
competing  sensory  processes  to  merge  in  a  single  conscious 
state  with  a  single  motor  reaction,  illustrating  the  princi- 
ples of  nervous  summation  and  arrest. 

4.  Imitative  suggestion  is  the  tendency  of  a  sensory  or 
ideal  process  to  maintain  itself  by  such  an  adaptation  of 
its  discharges  that  they  reinstate  in  turn  new  stimulations 
of  the  same  kind. 

Whether  any  simpler  formulation  of  these  partial  state- 
ments may  be  reached,  is  a  question  which  may  be  delayed 
until  we  have  looked  more  closely  at  certain  other  instances 
of  suggestion,  which  have  not  been  described  before,  and 
at  the  conditions  of  nervous  adaptation  in  general. ^ 

1  See  Chap.  VII.  on  'The  Theory  of  Development,'  and  Chap.  IX.  on 
*  Organic  Imitation.' 


S^ibconscious  Adult  Suggestion.  135 


§  5.    Subconscious  Adult  Suggestion. 

There  are  certain  phenomena  of  a  rather  striking  kind 
coming  under  this  head  whose  classification  is  so  evident 
that  discussion  of  the  general  psychological  principles 
which  they  involve  is  not  necessary.  The  kind  of  fact 
which  I  have  in  view  may  be  illustrated  with  sufficient 
clearness  merely  by  the  recital  of  the  following  observa- 
tions, which  are  in  themselves  new. 

Time-suggestion.  —  Professor  Ladd  has  pointed  out  in 
detail  —  what  has  for  a  long  time  been  taken  for  granted 
—  that  dream  states  are  largely  indebted  for  their  visual 
elements,  what  we  see  in  our  dreams,  to  accidental  lines, 
patches,  etc.,  in  the  field  of  vision,  when  the  eyes  are  shut, 
due  to  the  distended  blood  vessels  of  the  cornea  and  lids, 
to  changes  in  the  external  illumination,  to  the  presence  of 
dust  particles  of  different  configuration,  etc.^  The  other 
senses  also  undoubtedly  contribute  to  the  texture  of  our 
dreams  by  equally  subconscious  suggestions.  And  there 
is  no  doubt,  further,  that  our  waking  Hfe  is  constantly  in- 
fluenced by  equally  trivial  stimulations. 

I  have  tested  in  detail,  for  example,  the  conditions  of 
the  rise  of  so-called  *  internal  tunes '  —  we  speak  of 
'tunes  in  our  heads'  or  *in  our  ears' — and  find  certain 
suggestive  influences  which  in  most  cases  cause  these 
tunes  to  rise  and  take  their  course.  Often,  when  a  tune 
springs  up  'in  my  head,'  the  same  tune  has  been  lately  sung 
or  whistled  in  my  hearing,  though  quite  unconsciously  to 
myself.  Often  the  tunes  are  those  heard  in  church  the 
previous  day  or  earlier.     Such  a  tune  I  am  entirely  unable 

1  Ladd,  'Psychology  of  Visual  Dreams,'  in  Mind,  N.  S.,  Vol.  I.  (1892), 
p.  299. 


1 36  Suggestion. 

to  recall  voluntarily  :  yet  when  it  comes  into  my  mind's 
ear,  so  to  speak,  I  readily  recognize  it  as  belonging 
to  an  earlier  day's  experience.  Other  cases  show  various 
accidental  suggestions,  such  as  the  tune  *  Mozart '  sug- 
gested by  the  composer's  name,  the  tune  'Gentle  Annie' 
suggested  by  the  name  Annie,  etc.  In  all  these  cases  it  is 
only  after  the  tune  has  taken  possession  of  consciousness, 
and  after  much  seeking,  that  the  suggesting  influence  is 
discovered. 

Closer  analysis  reveals  the  following  facts.  The  '  time ' 
of  such  internal  tunes  is  usually  dictated  by  some  rhyth- 
mical subconscious  occurrence.  After  hearty  meals  it  is 
always  the  time  of  the  heart-beat,  unless  there  be  'in  the 
air '  some  more  impressive  stimulus ;  as,  for  example, 
when  on  ship-board,  the  beat  is  with  me  invariably  that  of 
the  engine  throbs.  When  walking  it  is  the  rhythm  of  the 
foot-fall.  On  one  occasion  a  knock  of  four  beats  on  the 
door  started  the  Marseillaise  in  my  ear :  following  up  this 
clue,  I  found  that  at  any  time,  different  divisions  of  musi- 
cal time  being  struck  on  the  table  at  will  by  another  per- 
son, tunes  would  spring  up  and  run  on,  getting  their  cue 
from  the  measures  suggested.  Further,  when  a  tune  dies 
away,  its  last  notes  often  suggest,  some  time  after,  another 
having  a  similar  movement  —  just  as  we  pass  from  one 
tune  to  another  in  a  'medley.'  It  may  also  be  noted  that 
in  my  case  the  tune  memories  are  auditive :  they  run  in 
my  head  when  I  have  no  words  for  them  and  have  never 
sung  them  —an  experience  which  is  consistent  with  the 
fact  that  these  '  internal  tunes '  arise  in  childhood  before 
the  faculty  of  speech.  They  also  have  distinct  pitch. 
For  example,  on  April  9,  1892,  I  found  a  tune  'in  my 
head  *  which  was  perfectly  familiar,  but  for  which  I  could 


Subconscio2is  Adult  Sziggcstioii.  137 

find  no  words.  Tested  on  the  piano,  the  pitch  was  f-sharp 
and  the  time  was  my  heart-beat.  I  finally,  after  much 
effort,  got  the  unworthy  words,  'Wait  till  the  clouds  roll 
by,'  by  humming  the  tune  over  repeatedly.  The  pitch  is 
determined,  probably,  by  the  accidental  condition  of  the 
auditory  centre  as  respects  pitch-readiness,  or  by  the  pitch- 
colourins:  of  the  external  sound  which  serves  as  stimulus 
to  the  tune. 

Dreams  as  Emotion  Stimulus.  —  Another  important 
realm  of  suo'2:estion  hitherto  overlooked  is  seen  in  the 
influence  of  dreams  on  the  waking  life.  Dreams  react  to 
deepen  waking  impressions,  and  to  strengthen  the  hold  of 
dominant  presentations  and  impulses.  This  fact  seems  to 
have  its  primary  application  to  emotion.  We  cannot  tell 
how  much  of  the  active  momentum  of  our  waking  life  we 
owe  to  dream  stimulation.  The  following  case  of  fact,  in 
the  life  of  my  little  girl  H.,  indicates  that  such  a  stimulus 
may  be  of  enormous  importance.  When  two  years  and 
three  months  of  age,  she  was  accidentally  run  over  by  a 
dog.  Before  this  she  had  been  very  fond  of  dogs.  She 
was  not  much  hurt,  but  very  much  frightened,  and  re- 
peated to  every  one  the  words,  'Doggie  run  over  baby.' 
The  next  day  she  saw  a  dog  on  the  street  and  showed 
some  signs  of  fear  until  the  brute  ran  away.  About  the 
second  night  after  the  occurrence  her  mother  and  I  were 
awakened  by  a  violent  outcry  in  H.'s  room.  On  going  in, 
the  child  was  found  sitting  in  bed  undergoing  a  paroxysm 
of  fear  from  a  bad  dream.  She  repeated  again  and  again 
after  leaving  the  room,  '  Doggie  run  over  baby  ana '  (ana 
was  her  word  for  there),  pointing  into  her  bedroom.  Evi- 
dently she  had  lived  over  again  in  her  dream  the  occur- 
rence with  the  dog.     The  effect  on  her  waking  life  was 


1 38  Suggestion. 

very  marked.  The  next  day  she  could  not  be  induced  to 
go  into  her  bedroom,  protesting,  '  Doggie  in  ana,'  and 
crying  lustily  if  the  endeavour  was  made  to  carry  her. 
Further,  for  several  days  the  sight  of  a  dog  on  the  street 
threw  her  into  such  convulsive  fits  of  fear  that  her  nurse 
brought  her  home  to  be  quieted  —  a  much  more  violent 
exhibition,  be  it  noted,  than  that  which  occurred  after  the 
real  occurrence  with  the  dog,  but  before  the  dream.  The 
sight  or  even  the  picture  of  a  dog  still  excites  great  emo- 
tion, and  it  is  not  unlikely  that  she  will  carry  for  life  this 
antipathy,  and  it  will  appear  later  to  be  unaccountable.^ 

Normal  Aiito-Snggestion. — A  further  class  of  sugges- 
tions, which  fall  under  the  general  phrase  '  auto-sugges- 
tion,' of  a  normal  type,  may  be  illustrated.  In  experiment- 
ing upon  the  possibility  of  suggesting  sleep  to  another,  I 
have  found  certain  strong  reactive  influences  upon  my 
own  mental  condition.  Such  an  effort,  which  involves 
the  picturing  of  another  as  asleep,  is  a  strong  auto-sugges- 
tion of  sleep,  taking  effect  in  my  own  case  in  about  five 
minutes  if  the  conditions  be  kept  constant.  The  more 
clearly  the  patient's  sleep  is  pictured,  the  stronger  be- 
comes the  subjective  feeling  of  drowsiness.  After  about 
ten  minutes  the  ability  to  give  strong  concentration  seems 
to  disintegrate,  attention  is  renewed  only  by  fits  and  starts 
and  in  the  presence  of  great  mental  inertia,  and  the  on- 
coming of  sleep  is  almost  overpowering.  An  unfailing- 
cure  for  insomnia,  speaking  for  myself,  is  the  persistent 
effort  to  put  some  one  else  asleep  by  hard  thinking  of  the 
end  in  view,  with  a  continued  gentle  movement,  such  as 
stroking  the  other  with  the  hand. 

1  Fere  cites  a  case  of  hysterical  paralysis  brought  on  by  a  dream,  Sensa- 
tion et  Mouvenient,  p.  25.     See  also  Brain,  January,  1887. 


Sitbconscious  Adztlt  Suggestion.  139 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  impossible  to  bring  on  a  state 
of  drowsiness  by  imagining  myself  asleep.  The  first 
effort  at  this,  indeed,  is  promising,  for  it  leads  to  a  state 
of  restfulness  and  ease  akin  to  the  mental  composure 
which  is  the  usual  preliminary  to  sleep ;  but  it  goes  no 
farther.  It  is  succeeded  by  a  state  of  steady  wakefulness, 
which  effort  of  attention  or  effort  not  to  attend  only  in- 
tensifies. If  the  victim  of  insomnia  could  only  forget  that 
he  is  thus  afflicted,  could  forget  himself  altogether,  his  case 
would  be  more  hopeful.  The  contrast  between  this  con- 
dition and  that  already  described  shows  that  it  is  the  self- 
idea,  with  the  emotions  it  awakens,  which  prevents  the 
suggestion  from  realizing  itself  and  probably  accounts  for 
most  cases  of  insomnia.^ 

The  attempt  to  analyze  out  the  emotional  *  moments ' 
which  enter  into  the  latter  case  yields  some  such  result  as 
the  following.  It  is  impossible  to  think  of  self,  however 
vaguely  and  fugitively,  without  inducing  positive  emo- 
tional excitement.  All  the  intense  self-motives  which 
practical  life  keeps  alive  —  the  most  vigorous  expressive 
influences  of  our  mental  nature  —  at  once  tend  to  spring 
up  from  their  nascent  state.  There  are  really  no  proper 
distinctions  among  them  :  pride  ^  shades  down  to  compla- 
cency, complacency  merges  into  mild  interest,  interest  be- 
comes intensified  in  anxiety  or  fear.  Or  the  mere  thought 
of  self  starts  a  train  of  affairs  through  consciousness  about 
which  personal  concern  is  lively.  When  one  thinks  of 
himself,  a  kind  of  egoistic  excitement  at  once  arises.     It  is 

1  This  is  confirmed  by  the  fact  that  insomnia  readily  yields  to  hypnotic 
suggestion. 

2  A  friend  informs  me  that  when  he  pictures  himself  asleep  or  dead,  he 
cannot  help  feeling  gratified  that  he  makes  so  handsome  a  corpse. 


1 40  Suggestio7i. 

undoubtedly  these  subjective  elements,  these  emotional 
phases,  which  prevent  such  conscious  auto-suggestions 
from  realizino-  themselves. 

Sense  Exaltation.  —  Recent  hypnotic  discussions  have 
shown  the  remarkable  exaltation  which  the  senses  may 
attain  in  somnambulism,  together  with  a  corresponding 
refinement  in  the  interpretative  faculty.  Events,  etc., 
quite  subconscious,  usually  become  suggestions  of  direct 
influence  upon  the  subject.  Unintended  gestures,  habit- 
ual with  the  experimenter,  may  suffice  to  hypnotize  his 
accustomed  subject.  The  possibility  of  such  training  of 
the  senses  in  the  normal  state  has  not  had  sufficient  em- 
phasis. The  young  child's  subtle  discriminations  of  facial 
and  other  personal  indications  are  remarkable.  The  pro- 
longed experience  of  putting  H.  to  sleep  —  extending  over 
a  period  of  more  than  six  months,  during  which  I  slept 
beside  her  bed  —  served  to  make  me  alive  to  a  certain 
class  of  suggestions  otherwise  quite  beyond  notice.^ 

In  the  first  place,  we  may  note  the  intense  auto-sugges- 
tion of  sleep  already  pointed  out,  under  the  stimulus  of  re- 
peated nursery  rhymes  regularly  resorted  to  in  putting  the 
child  asleep.  Second,  surprising  progressive  exaltation  of 
hearing  and  the  interpretation  of  sounds  coming  from  her  in 
a  dark  room.  At  the  end  of  four  or  five  months,  her  move- 
ments in  bed  awoke  me  or  not  according  as  she  herself  was 
awake  or  not.  Frequently  after  awaking  I  was  distinctly 
aware  of  what  movements   of  hers  had  awaked  me.^     A 

1  It  is  well  known  that  mothers  are  awake  to  the  needs  of  their  infants 
when  they  are  asleep  to  everything  else ;  but  no  psychological  observer  has, 
to  my  knowledge,  made  a  personal  study  of  the  mental  state  in  himself. 

2  This  fact  is  analogous  to  our  common  experience  of  being  awaked  by  a 
loud  noise  and  then  hearing  it  after  we  awake  ;  although  the  explanation  is 
not  the  same. 


Siibconscious  Adult  Suggestion.  141 

movement  of  her  head  by  which  it  was  held  up  from 
her  pillow  was  readily  distinguished  from  the  restless 
movements  of  her  sleep.  It  was  not  so  much,  there- 
fore, exaltation  of  hearing  as  exaltation  of  the  function 
of  the  7rcog7ittio7i  of  sounds  heard  and  of  their  discriini- 
jiation. 

Again,  the  same  phenomenon  to  an  equally  marked 
degree  attended  the  sound  of  her  breathing.  It  is  well 
enough  known  that  the  smallest  functional  bodily  changes 
induce  changes  in  both  the  rapidity  and  the  quality  of  the 
respiration.^  In  sleep  the  muscles  of  inhalation  and  ex- 
halation are  relaxed,  inhalation  becomes  long  and  deep, 
exhalation  short  and  exhaustive,  and  the  rhythmic  intervals 
of  respiration  much  lengthened.  Now  degrees  of  relative 
wakefulness  are  indicated  with  surprising  delicacy  by  the 
slight  respiration-sounds  given  forth  by  the  sleeper.  Pro- 
fessional nurses  learn  to  interpret  these  indications  with 
great  skill.  This  kind  of  hearing-exaltation  became  very 
pronounced  in  my  operations  with  my  child.  After  some 
experience  the  peculiar  breathing  of  advancing  or  actual 
wakefulness  in  the  child  was  sufficient  to  wake  me.  And 
when  awake  myself,  the  change  in  the  infant's  respiration- 
sounds  to  those  indicative  of  on-coming  sleep  was  sufficient 
to  suggest  or  bring  on  sleep  in  myself.  In  the  dark,  also, 
the  general  character  of  her  breathing-sounds  was  inter- 
preted with  great  accuracy  in  terms  of  her  varied  needs, 
her  comfort  or  discomfort,  etc.  The  same  kind  of  sugges- 
tion from  the  respiration-sounds  now  troubles  me  when- 
ever any  one  is  sleeping  within  hearing  distance.^ 

1  Cf.  Vierordt  in  Gerhardt's  Handbuch  der  Kinderkrankheiten,  p.  215. 

2  This  is  an  unpleasant  result  which  I  find  confirmed  by  professional 
infants'  nurses.     They  complain  of  loss  of  sleep  when  off  duty.      Mrs.  James 


142  Sttggestion. 

The  reactions  in  movement  upon  these  suggestions  are 
very  marked  and  appropriate,  in  customary  or  habitual 
Hnes,  although  the  stimulations  are  quite  subconscious. 
The  clearest  illustrations  in  this  body  of  my  experiences 
were  afforded  by  my  responses  in  crude  songs  to  the 
infant's  waking  movements  and  breathing-sounds.  I  have 
often  waked  myself  by  myself  singing  one  of  two  nursery 
rhymes,  which  by  endless  repetition  night  after  night  had 
become  so  automatic  as  to  follow  in  a  reactive  way  upon 
the  sense-stimulus  from  the  child.  It  is  certainly  aston- 
ishing that  among  the  things  which  one  may  get  to  do 
automatically,  we  find  automatic  singing  :  but  writers  on 
mental  defect  have  claimed  that  the  function  of  musical 
or  semi-musical  expression  may  be  reflex.^ 

The  principle  of  subconscious  suggestion,  of  which 
these  simple  facts  are  less  important  illustrations,  has 
very  interesting  applications  in  the  higher  reaches  of 
social,  moral,  and  educational  theory.     I  have  applied  the 

Murray,  an  infants'  nurse  in  Toronto,  informs  me  that  she  finds  it  impossible 
to  sleep  when  she  has  no  infant  in  hearing  distance,  and  for  that  reason  she 
never  asks  for  a  vacation.  Her  normal  sleep  has  evidently  come  to  depend 
upon  continuous  soporific  suggestions  from  a  child.  In  another  point,  also, 
her  experience  confirms  my  observations,  viz.,  the  child's  movements,  prelimi- 
nary to  waking,  awake  her,  when  no  other  movements  of  the  child  do  so  — 
the  consequence  being  that  she  is  ready  for  the  infant  when  it  gets  fully  awake 
and  cries  out. 

I  may  add  that  these  vague  suggestive  influences,  acting  upon  the  operator, 
have  not  been  sufficiently  weighed  in  the  practice  of  hypnotism.  Ochorowicz 
points  this  out.  It  is  almost  impossible  for  the  operator  to  give  suggestions 
which  he  has  not  himself  taken  in  a  measure  from  the  patient,  or  which  both 
he  and  the  patient  have  not  gotten  in  common  from  a  common  psychic  atmos- 
phere. There  is,  I  fancy,  a  good  deal  of  this  reciprocal  influence  in  the  cases 
of  striking  rapport  between  particular  operators  and  patients.  Of  course  I 
can  more  easily  give  eff'ective  suggestions  to  you,  if  I  am  myself  getting  what 
I  suggest  in  whole  or  part  from  you  in  the  first  instance. 

1  Cf.  Wallaschek,  Zeitsch.  filr  Psychologic,  VI.,  Hefte  2,  3. 


Inhibitory  Suggestion.  143 

phrase   'plastic    imitation'   to    certain    of   the    social    and 
educational  phenomena.^ 


§  6.    InJdbitory  Suggestion. 

An  interesting  class  of  phenomena  which  figure  perhaps 
at  all  the  levels  of  suggestion  now  described,  may  be 
known  as  *  inhibitory  suggestions.'  The  phrase,  in  its 
broadest  use,  refers  to  all  cases  in  which  the  suggesting 
stimulus  tends  to  suppress,  check,  inhibit,  movement.  We 
find  this  in  certain  cases  just  as  strongly  marked  as  the 
positive  movement-bringing  kind  of  suggestion.  The  facts 
may  be  put  under  certain  heads  in  relation  to  the  types  of 
suggestion  already  enumerated,  the  general  theory  being 
left  over  for  the  doctrine  of  mental  development  found  in 
subsequent  chapters. 

Pain  Suggestion.  —  Of  course,  the  fact  that  pain  inhib- 
its movement  occurs  at  once  to  the  reader.  As  far  as  this 
is  true  always,  and  is  a  native  inherited  thing,  it  is  organic, 
and  so  falls  under  the  head  of  '  physiological  suggestion ' 
of  a  negative  sort.  The  child  shows  contracting  move- 
ments, crying  movements,  starting  and  jumping  move- 
ments, shortly  after  birth,  and  so  plainly  that  we  need  not 
hesitate  to  say  that  these  pain  responses  are  provided  for 
in  his  nervous  system ;  and  that,  in  general,  they  are 
inhibitory  and  contrary  to  those  other  native  reactions 
which  indicate  pleasure.  Our  theory  provides,  as  stated 
below,  a  way  of  accounting  for  this  state  of  things.^ 

The  influence  of  pain,  besides  being  thus  a  physiological 
datum,  extends  everywhere  through  mental  development. 

1  Mind,  January,  1894;    cf.  Chap.  XIL,  §  2,  below. 

2  Especially,  Chap.  VII.,  and  Chap.  XVI.,  §  2. 


1 44  Suggestion. 

It  is  one  of  the  main  objects  of  this  book  to  ascertain  its 
exact  function,  both  in  individual  and  in  race  develop- 
ment ;  so  any  further  word  upon  it  here  would  only  anti- 
cipate later  detailed  treatment.  The  general  fact,  however, 
is  this  :  that  pain  suggests  a  lively  muscular  revolt  away 
from  every  stimulus  which  produces  it ;  and  this  state- 
ment includes,  of  course,  the  inhibition  of  any  movement 
which  gives  pain,  since  this  movement  is  itself  felt  as  a 
stimulating  or  incoming  process  along  those  afferent  nerve 
courses  which  serve  as  the  apparatus  of  the  muscular 
sense. 

Contj'ol  Sjio-crestion.  —  This  covers  all  cases  which  show 
any  kind  of  restraint  set  upon  the  movements  of  the  body 
short  of  that  which  comes  from  voluntary  intention.  The 
infant  brings  the  movements  of  his  legs,  arms,  head,  etc., 
gradually  into  some  kind  of  order  and  system.  This  is 
accomplished  by  a  system  of  organic  checks  and  counter- 
checks, by  which  associations  are  formed  between  mus- 
cular sensations  and  certain  other  sensations,  as  of  sight, 
touch,  hearing,  etc.  The  latter  serve  as  suggestions  to 
the  performance  of  those  movements,  and  those  only,  which 
produce  the  former.  The  infant  learns  to  hold  up  his 
head,  to  raise  his  trunk,  to  extend  his  hands,  to  grasp  with 
thumb  opposite  the  four  fingers  —  all  purely  by  such  con- 
trol suggestions.  The  inhibition  and  postponement  of  the 
natural  functions  for  the  suitable  time  and  place  also  fall 
here. 

These  cases  come  so  near  to  the  sphere  of  voluntary 
action  —  indeed,  they  pass  so  directly  into  volitions  — 
that  they  are  more  profitably  discussed  in  the  chapter 
devoted  to  that  topic.  We  will  there  see  reasons  for 
rejecting  the  view  of  some,  that  these  are  voluntary  acts 


Inhibitory  Siiggcstiou.  145 

on  the  part  of  the  child.  The  few  new  observations  which 
I  have  to  offer  on  this  topic  may  also  be  reserved. 

Cojitraiy  Suggestion.  —  By  this  is  meant  a  tendency  of 
a  very  remarkable  kind  observable  in  many  children,  no 
less  than  in  many  adults,  to  do  the  contrary  when  any 
course  is  suggested.  The  very  word  '  contrary  '  is  used  in 
popular  talk  to  describe  an  individual  who  shows  this  type 
of  conduct.  Such  a  child  or  man  is  rebellious  whenever 
rebellion  is  possible ;  he  seems  to  kick  constitutionally 
against  the  pricks.  My  child  E.  showed  it  in  her  second 
year  in  a  very  marked  way.  When  told  that  a  new  taste 
was  'good' — a  suggestion  readily  taken  in  its  positive 
sense  by  her  sister  at  that  age  —  she  would  turn  away 
with  evident  distaste  even  when  she  had  liked  the  same 
taste  earlier.  When  asked  to  give  her  hand  into  mine, — 
a  case  of  direct  imitative  suggestion,  —  she  thrust  it  be- 
hind her  back.  The  sight  of  hat  and  cloak  was  a  signal 
for  a  tempest,  although  she  enjoyed  out-door  excursions. 
These  are  only  instances  from  many  of  her  contrary  sug- 
gestions at  this  period.  The  tendency  yielded  to  the  all- 
conquering  onset  of  imitation  late  in  her  second  year,  and 
she  is  now  (third  year)  as  docile  an  imitator  as  one  could 
desire. 

The  fact  of  'contrariness'  in  older  children  —  especially 
boys  —  is  so  familiar  to  all  who  have  observed  school 
children  with  any  care,  that  I  need  not  cite  further  de- 
tails. And  men  and  women  often  become  so  enslaved  to 
suggestions  of  the  contrary  that  they  seem  only  to  wait 
for  indications  of  the  wishes  of  others  in  order  to  oppose 
and  thwart  them. 

Contrary  suggestions  are  to  be  explained  as  exaggerated 
instances  of  control.     It  is  easy  to  see  that  the  checks 

L 


146  Suggestion. 

and  counter-checks  already  spoken  of  as  constituting  the 
method  of  control  of  muscular  movement  —  that  these 
may  themselves  become  so  habitual  and  intense  as  to 
dominate  the  reactions  which  they  should  only  regulate. 
The  associations  between  the  muscular  series  and  the 
visual  series,  let  us  say,  which  controls  it,  comes  to  work 
backwards,  so  that  the  drift  of  the  organic  processes  is 
toward  certain  contrary  reverse  movement.  Certain  of 
the  other  associates  of  the  control  series  also,  especially 
those  which,  by  strong  contrasting  experiences  of  pleasure 
and  pain,  represent  in  any  sense  a  contrary  series,  may 
become  dominating.  While  in  the  case  of  simple  move- 
ments, as  I  have  said,  the  dominant  associates  are  only 
the  same  motor  and  visual  series  read  backwards ;  yet  the 
range  of  contrast  effects  secured  by  association  extends  to 
all  cases  of  opposing  systems  of  movement  and  suggestions 
of  conduct.  So  contrary  suggestion  becomes  clear  as  a 
case  of  auto-suggestion  in  which  the  stimulating  sensation 
or  thought  is  itself  started  up  in  sharp  contrast  and 
habitual  opposition  to  a  present  external  suggestion  of 
the  regular  kind. 

In  the  higher  reaches  of  conduct  and  life  we  find  in- 
teresting cases  of  very  refined  contrary  suggestion.  In 
the  man  of  ascetic  temperament,  the  duty  of  self-denial 
takes  the  form  of  a  regular  contrary  suggestion  in  oppo- 
sition to  every  invitation  to  self-indulgence,  however  inno- 
cent. And  the  over-scrupulous  mind,  like  the  over-precise, 
is  a  prey  to  the  eternal  remonstrances  from  the  contrary 
which  intrude  their  advice  into  all  his  decisions.  In  matters 
of  thought  and  belief,  also,  cases  are  common  of  stubborn 
opposition  to  evidence,  and  persistence  in  opinion,  which 
are  in  no  way  due  to  the  cogency  of  the  contrary  argu- 
ment, or  to  real  force  of  conviction. 


Inhibiloiy  Suggestion.  147 

Bashfiilncss.  —  I  may  first  give  my  observations  on  this 
interesting  fact  of  child-life,  considered  as  an  exhibition  of 
what  I  have  called  '  inhibitory  suggestion ' ;  and  then 
show  its  bearings. 

The  general  character  of  a  child's  bashfulness  need  not 
be  enlarged  upon.  Its  form  of  expression  is  also  familiar. 
It  begins  to  appear  generally  in  the  first  year,  showing 
itself  as  an  inhibiting  influence  upon  the  child's  normal 
activities.  Its  most  evident  signs  are  nervous  fingerings 
of  dress,  objects,  hands,  etc.,  turning  away  of  head  and 
body,  bowing  of  head  and  hiding  of  face,  awkward  move- 
ments of  trunk  and  legs,  and  in  extreme  cases,  reddening 
of  the  face,  puckering  of  lips  and  eye  muscles,  and  finally 
cries  and  weeping.  An  important  difference,  however,  is 
observable  in  these  exhibitions  according  as  the  child  is 
accompanied  by  a  familiar  person  or  not.  When  the 
mother  or  nurse  is  present,  many  of  the  signs  seem  to  be 
useful  in  securing  concealment  from  the  eye  of  strangers  — 
behind  dress  or  apron  or  figure  of  the  familiar  person.  In 
the  absence,  however,  of  such  a  refuge  the  child  sinks  often 
into  a  state  of  general  passivity  or  inhibition  of  movement, 
akin  to  the  sort  of  paralysis  usually  associated  with  great 
fear. 

This  analogy  with  the  physical  signs  of  fear,  gives  a 
real  indication,  I  think,  of  the  race  origin  of  bashfulness, 
which  is  probably  a  differentiation  of  fear.  This  I  cannot 
dwell  upon  now,  but  simply  suggest  that  bashfulness  arose 
as  a  special  utility-reaction  on  occasion  of  fear  of  persons, 
in  view  of  personal  qualities  possessed  by  the  one  who  fears. 
The  concealing  tendency  also  shows  the  parallel  develop- 
ment of  intimate  personal  relationships  of  protection,  sup- 
port, etc.,  and  so  gives  indications  of  certain  early  social 
conditions. 


148  Suggestion. 

My  observations  of  bashfulness — not  to  dwell  upon 
descriptions  which  have  been  made  before  by  others  — 
serve  to  throw  the  illustrations  of  it  into  certain  periods  or 
epochs  which  I  may  briefly  characterize  in  order. 

I.  The  child  is  earliest  seized  with  what  may  be  called 
'primary'  or  'organic'  bashfulness  akin  to  the  organic 
stages  in  the  well-recognized  instinctive  emotions,  such  as 
fear,  anger,  sympathy,  etc.^  This  exhibition  occurs  in  the 
first  year  and  marks  the  attitudes  of  the  infant  toward 
strangers.  It  is  not  so  much  inhibitory  of  action  in  this 
first  stage ;  it  rather  takes  on  the  positive  signs  of  fear, 
with  protestation,  shrinking,  crying,  etc.  It  falls  easily 
under  the  type  of  reaction  described  as  '  sensori-motor 
suggestion,'  above ;  being  very  largely  provided  for  in  the 
nervous  equipment  of  the  child  at  this  age. 

The  duration  of  this  stage  depends  largely  upon  the 
child's  social  environment.  The  passage  from  the  attitude 
of  instinctive  antipathy  toward  out-siders,  and  that  of 
affection  equally  instinctive  toward  the  members  of  the 
household,  over  into  a  more  reasonable  sense  of  the  differ- 
ence between  proved  friends  and  unproved  strangers  — 
this  depends  directly  upon  the  growth  of  the  sense  of 
general  social  relationships  established  by  experience.^ 
One  of  the  most  important  elements  in  the  child's  prog- 
ress, in  this  way,  out  of  its  '  organic '  social  life,  is  the 
degree  and  variety  of  its  intercourse  with  other  children, 
and  indeed  also  with  other  adults,  than  those  of  its  own 
home.     Children  carried  to  summer  hotels  every  year,  or 

1  On  which  last  see  Chap.  XL,  §  3,  below,  and  cf.  my  Handbook  of  Psy- 
chology, II.,  Chap.  VIII.,  §  7. 

2  The  experience,  e.g.,  largely  got  through  imitation  and  its  clarifying  influ- 
ence upon  the  sense  of  self  in  the  child  :  see  below,  Chap.  XL,  §  3. 


hihibitory  Suggestion.  149 

brought  frequently  into  the  drawing-room  to  see  the 
mothers'  callers,  soon  lose  all  *  fear  of  strangers '  and 
become  quite  frankly  approachable,  even  showing  great 
liking  for  society  at  the  tender  age  of  a  year  and  a  half  or 
so.  On  the  other  hand  children  kept  in  extreme  isolation 
from  strangers,  young  or  old,  may  show  extraordinary 
paralysis  of  all  motor  functions,  of  a  markedly  organic 
kind,  steadily  for  two  or  three  years  later  on  in  their  devel- 
opment, when  brought  suddenly  into  the  presence  of  those 
who  are  unfamiliar.^ 

The  rapidity  with  which  a  child  gets  over  its  organic 
bashfulness  varies  also  remarkably  with  the  attitudes  of 
older  children  whom  he  sees.  Nothing  else  cures  a  child 
of  this  physical  shyness  as  quickly  as  the  example  of  an 
older  child.  This  is  also  one  of  the  marked  offices  of  imi- 
tation. It  presents  to  the  imitative  child  an  example  or 
'  copy,'  which  tends  to  bring  out  his  action  in  definite  ways 
earlier  than  his  own  organic  growth  would  in  itself  have 
warranted.  The  child  by  instinct  imitates  movements,  etc., 
which  he  would  otherwise  have  waited  to  acquire  largely 
by  accident.  In  this  way  the  stages  of  social  growth  are 
very  materially  shortened. 

2.  I  find  next  a  period  of  strong  social  tendency  in  the 
child,  of  toleration  of  strangers  and  liking  for  persons  gen- 
erally, in  great  contrast  to  the  attitudes  of  organic  distrust 
of  the  earlier  period  just  mentioned.  There  seems  to  be 
in  this  a  reaction  against  the  instinct  of  social  self-preser- 
vation characteristic  of  the  earlier  stage.     It  is  due  in  all 

^  See  the  remarks  on  such  *  isolation,'  in  reference  to  the  development  of 
personality,  in  my  short  article  in  the  Century  Magazine,  December,  1894, 
repeated  in  substance  below,  Chap.  XII.,  §  3.  The  matter  is  to  be  more  fully 
developed  in  my  proposed  volume  of  '  Interpretations.' 


1 50  Suggestio7i, 

likelihood  to  the  actual  experience  of  the  child  in  receiv- 
ing kind  treatment  from  strangers  —  kinder  in  the  way  of 
indiscriminate  indulgence  than  the  more  orderly  treatment 
which  it  gets  from  its  own  parents.  Everybody  comes  to 
be  trusted  on  first  acquaintance  by  the  child,  through  the 
teachings  of  his  own  experience,  just  as  in  the  earlier 
years  everybody  was  treated  by  him,  under  the  instincts  of 
his  inherited  nature,  as  an  agent  of  possible  harm. 

That  this  new  phase  of  social  attitude  is  learned  from 
experience  is  seen  in  the  absence  of  this  confidence,  on 
the  part  of  the  child,  toward  animals.  The  fear,  purely 
of  the  organic  stage,  persists  in  the  child's  thoughts  of 
animals  which  are  new  to  him,  and  only  becomes  more 
confirmed  as  he  fails  to  get  the  same  reasons  for  *  modify- 
ing his  opinion '  that  teach  him  to  tolerate  strange  persons 
more  and  more  comfortably.  The  contrast  is  strongly 
brought  out  sometimes  when  such  a  young  child  meets  ani- 
mals in  public  places.  He  then  turns  to  persons  for  pro- 
tection, even  to  the  strange  persons  before  whom,  under 
ordinary  circumstances,  he  would  stand  abashed.  His  na- 
tive sense  of  social  protection,  at  first  limited  to  his  natural 
protectors  in  his  own  house,  has  come  to  extend  to  all 
persons,  as  against  such  common  enemies  as  the  brutes. 
Later  on,  as  we  know,  the  domestic  animals  get  taken 
over,  also,  from  the  one  class  into  the  other. 

3.  Finally  I  note  the  return  of  bashfulness  in  the 
child's  second  and  third  years.  This  time  it  is  bashful- 
ness in  the  proper  sense  of  the  term,  rid  of  the  element 
of  fear,  and  rid,  largely,  of  its  compelling  organic  force 
and  methods  of  expression.  The  bashful  three-year-old 
smiles  in  the  midst  of  his  hesitations,  draws  near  to  the 
object  of  his  curiosity,  is  evidently  overwhelmed  with  the 


Inhibitory  Suggestion.  151 

sense  of  his  own  presence  rather  than  with  that  of  his  new 
acquaintance,  and  indulges  in  actions  calculated  to  keep 
notiee  drazvn  to  Jnniself. 

The  reality  of  this  group  of  the  child's  social  attitudes, 
and  the  great  contrast  which  they  present  to  those  of  the 
organic  period,  can  hardly  have  too  much  emphasis.  It 
is  one  of  the  great  outstanding  facts  of  his  progressive 
relation  to  the  elements  of  his  social  milieu.  There  is  a 
sort  of  self-exhibition,  almost  of  coquetry,  in  the  child's 
behaviour ;  w^hich  shows  the  most  remarkable  commin- 
gling of  native  organic  elements  with  the  social  lessons  of 
personal  well-  and  ill-desert  which  are  now  becoming  of 
such  importance  in  his  life.  All  this  makes  so  marked  a 
contrast  to  the  exhibitions  of  organic  bashfulness  that  it 
constitutes  in  my  opinion  a  most  important  resource  for 
the  study  of  the  evolution  of  the  social  sense. 

In  this  last  case  we  have  before  us,  in  short,  a  phenome- 
non of  rather  complex  self-consciousness  —  a  thing  of 
ieieal  value  —  and  its  suggestion-complexes,  as  they  body 
themselves  forth  in  the  child's  reactions,  tell  of  his  extraor- 
dinary progress  in  the  understanding  of  himself  and  the 
world.  He  now  begins  to  show  the  germ  of  modesty  and 
of  all  the  emotions  akin  to  and  contrary  to  it. 

With  this  degree  of  progress  I  shall  now  leave  the  child, 
reserving  for  my  later  work  the  discussion  of  the  develop- 
ment of  true  modesty  in  its  later  stages  in  the  intricate 
special  movements  of  adolescence  :  but  it  remains  to  point 
out  the  congruity  between  this  scheme  of  the  child's  dif- 
ferent behaviours  in  respect  to  persons  and  the  different 
mental  suggestions  which  in  an  earlier  place  ^  we  found 
him  actually  getting  from  persons. 

1  Cf.  §  3  of  this  chapter,  above,  which  restates  an  article  on  '  Personality 
Suggestion,'  in  The  Psychological  Review,  I.,  p.  274,  May,  1894. 


1 5  2  Suggestion, 

It  will  be  remembered  that  several  aspects  of  the  child's 
personal  environment  were  found  to  appeal  to  him  in  a 
progressive  way.  It  seemed  fair  to  think  that  persons  are 
at  first  to  him  only  a  peculiar  part  of  his  'projected,' 
presented,  objective,  world  of  things.  He  has  '  personal 
projects,'  as  we  found  it  well  to  call  them,  before  he  has 
any  sense  of  himself  as  a  spiritual  being  or  as  the  subject 
of  his  own  mental  processes.  The  getting  of  objects 
seems  to  be  part  of  the  business  for  which  his  nervous 
equipment  more  or  less  adequately  provides,  and  among 
these  objects,  the  persons  who  move  around  him  get  them- 
selves characterized  by  very  important  marks. 

The  observation  of  organic  bashfulness  tends,  when 
viewed  in  connection  with  this  earlier  point,  to  confirm 
this  view  of  the  way  the  child  begins  to  apprehend  per- 
sons ;  and  at  the  same  time,  it  enables  us  to  see  a  little 
farther.  For  strange  as  it  may  appear,  we  are  here  con- 
fronted with  an  element  of  organic  equipment  especially 
fitted  to  receive  and  respond  to  these  peculiar  objects,  per- 
sons, 'personal  projects.'  The  child  strikes  instinctively 
an  extraordinary  series  of  attitudes  when  persons  appear 
among  his  objects,  attitudes  which  other  objects,  qita 
objects,  do  not  excite.  And  later  in  life,  in  the  organic 
effects  indicative  of  modesty,  such  as  blushing,  hesitat- 
ing, etc.,  we  find  similar  signs  of  a  social  rapport  which 
has  grown  into  the  very  fibers  of  our  nerves.  These 
attitudes  extend  somewhat  to  animals,  as  we  have  seen  ; 
and  that  makes  it  all  the  more  striking.  For  animals  are 
persons,  to  a  child  of  that  age ;  they  act  upon  him  through 
his  animal  parts,  through  physical  pains,  pleasures,  fears, 
etc.,  and  that  is  the  only  way  that  persons  also  can  act 
upon  an  infant  a  year  old. 


Inhibitory  Suggestion.  153 

We  have  to  say,  therefore,  that  the  child  is  born  to  be  a 
member  of  society,  in  the  same  sense,  precisely,  that  he  is 
born  with  eyes  and  ears  to  see  and  hear  the  movements 
and  sounds  of  the  world,  and  with  touch  to  feel  the  things 
of  space ;  and,  as  I  hope  to  show  later  in  detail,  all  views 
of  the  man  as  a  total  creature  a  creation,  must  recognize 
him  not  as  a  single  soul  shut  up  in  a  single  body  to  act,  or 
to  abstain  from  acting,  upon  others  similarly  shut  up  in 
similar  bodies;  but  as  a  soul  partly  in  his  own  body,  partly 
in  the  bodies  of  others,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  so  inti- 
mate is  this  social  bond  —  a  service  for  which  he  pays  in 
kind,  since  we  see  in  his  body,  considered  simply  as  a 
physical  organism,  preparation  for  the  reception  of  the 
soul-life,  the  suggestions  of  mind  and  spirit,  of  those 
others.  I  do  not  see  wherein  the  community  of  the  senses 
together,  in  a  single  life  of  nervous  activity,  differs  very 
much  in  conception  from  this  community  of  men,  bound 
together  by  the  native  ties  which  lie  at  the  basis  of  their 
most  abstract  and  developed  social  organizations. 

Again,  the  second  phase  of  the  child's  actions  in  the 
presence  of  persons  —  the  freer,  more  ready  reception  of 
strangers  and  intercourse  with  them,  seen  usually  during 
the  second  year  —  this  also  gives  us  what  our  earlier  notes 
on  *  personality  suggestion  '  would  lead  us  to  expect.  We 
saw  that  the  child  begins  to  find  out  more  about  persons, 
and  so  to  gain  associations  which  give  him  the  beginning 
of  certain  expectations  regarding  them ;  self-formed  ex- 
pectations, that  is,  no  longer  dependent  merely  upon  the 
stirrings  of  instinct  and  inherited  impulse.  He  learns  that 
pleasure  almost  always  comes  from  persons,  and  so  does 
the  alleviation  of  pain.  This  is  a  mortal  blow  at  organic 
bashfulness,  as  every  father  and  mother  knows.     A  lump 


1 5  4  Suggestion. 

of  sugar  will  very  soon  release  the  inhibitions  of  the  shy 
year-old.  Then  he  further  learns  something  of  the  char- 
acteristics of  persons,  the  irregularity  of  personal  action, 
the  presence  of  the  '  personal  equation  '  of  mood  and 
feeling  in  those  nearest  to  him.  This  leads  him  to  seek 
out  methods,  somewhat  individual  to  himself,  of  pleasing 
these  near  persons  and  of  securing  their  smile  and  appro- 
bation, or  of  escaping  the  reproofs  which  even  his  shy- 
ness brings ;  and  these  he  substitutes  for  the  blinder 
attempt  which  nature  taught  him  to  hide  his  physical 
person. 

And  he  also  learns  our  habits,  the  regularities  of  char- 
acter in  adults,  and  so  learns  that  nobody  means  to  hurt 
him,  after  all.  It  is  amusing  how  soon  a  two-  or  three- 
year-old  child  *  sizes  up '  a  stranger,  and  meets  him  half- 
way with  conduct  more  or  less  appropriately  attuned  to 
the  indications  of  character  shown  in  the  face  and  acts 
of  the  newcomer. 

So,  with  all  this,  the  instinctive  or  '  organic  '  bashf  ulness 
gets  rapidly  rubbed  away.  But  it  is  now  clear  that  the 
means  of  this  freedom  from  it  are  all  social.  A  child's 
growth  away  from  the  instinct  of  social  fear  to  the  appre- 
hension of  social  truth,  and  all  his  actions  midway  in  this 
progress,  come  only  from  varied  and  persistent  experience 
of  people  and  appeals  to  living  examples.  How  can  char- 
acter be  apprehended  if  characters  are  absent }  And  how 
can  character-schemes  be  grown  into,  if  the  regularity  of 
the  child's  life  is  of  so  narrow  a  scope  that  all  the  threads 
of  his  social  relationship  run  the  same  way,  and  no  tan- 
gles and  confusions  arise  to  bring  out  his  own  strenuous 
action  and  his  rebellions  against  his  native  reflex  ways  of 
behaviour } 


IiiJiibitory  Suggesliou.  155 

The  on-coming  of  true  bashfulness,  finally, — the  bash- 
fulness  which  shows  reflection,  in  its  simpler  form,  upon 
self  and  the  actions  of  self,  —  represents  the  child's  direct 
application  of  what  he  knows  of  persons  to  his  own  inner 
life.  It  is  what  I  have  called  the  *  subjective  '  stage  in 
his  sense  of  personality.^ 

But,  as  we  shall  also  see,  this  grows  only  apace  with 
the  contrary  movement  by  which  he  assigns  his  own 
enriched  mental  experience  back  to  his  teacher,  and  seeks 
his  further  judgment  upon  it.  The  child,  when  he  knows 
himself  able  to  draw  a  figure,  for  example,  does  not  know 
this  alone,  or  this  completely.  He  has  also  the  sense  of 
the  social  *  copy '  or  example  from  which  the  lesson  was 
learned,  and  further  and  with  it,  he  knows  that  his  per- 
formance is  again  subject  to  revision  in  light  of  the 
approval  or  disapproval  of  teacher  or  friend.  The  per- 
formances of  the  self  cannot  in  any  case  be  freed  from 
the  sense  of  possible  inspection  by  others,  and  the  child 
shrinks  from  this  inspection.  This  has  further  develop- 
ment below.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  in  this  higher  rapport, 
which  involves  closely  the  sense  of  self-agency,  but  self- 
agency  still  tied  down  to  the  agency  of  other  people 
like  self,  —  here  in  the  real  reflective  relation  of  self  to 
others,  —  comes  the  third  and  crowning  stage  of  the  class 
of  phenomena  known  by  the  word  bashfulness.  My  chil- 
dren do  their  imperfect  tasks  for  me  because  they  know 
me  to  understand  and  be  indulgent :  even  the  elder,  as- 
sumes the  patron,  and  says  of  the  younger :  *  She  is  so 
little,  you  know.'  But  in  the  presence  of  the  stranger 
whose  opinion  is  not  known  beforehand,  they  are  bashful 
with  the  sense  of  new  standards  perhaps  firmly  insisted 

^  See  Mind,  January,  1.S94;   also  below,  Chap.  XI.,  §  3. 


156  Stcggestion. 

upon.  This  is  where  the  inhibiting  suggestion  of  true 
bashfulness  appears :  that  of  modesty,  and  clearly  also 
that  of  certain  ethical  emotions. 

The  whole  situation  becomes,  I  may  add,  an  extraordi- 
nary point  of  vantage  for  estimating  the  development  view 
of  the  origin  of  the  social  and  personal  sense.  We  have 
in  it  direct  evidence  of  the  growth  of  the  social  instinct 
by  accretions  from  experiences  of  social  conditions  —  or 
if  we  go  into  refinements  of  biological  theory,  from  the 
adding  up  of  variations  all  fitted  to  survive  socially  —  and 
direct  evidence,  further,  of  the  lines  of  progress  which 
these  experiences  and  variations  have  marked  out.  For 
the  infant  is  an  embryo  person,  a  social  unit  in  the  process 
of  forming;  and  he  is,  in  these  early  stages,  plainly 
recapitulating  the  items  in  the  social  history  of  the  race.^ 

This  social  evolution  presents  a  phase,  therefore,  of  gen- 
eral development  in  which  the  theory  that  the  individual 
goes  through  stages  which  repeat  the  race-stages  of  his 
species,  ought  to  find  illustrations  of  more  than  common 
value.  For  the  social  life  is  a  late  attainment,  whether 
considered  anthropologically  or  racially,  and  the  child  waits 
to  begin  the  series  of  '  laps  in  the  social  race '  until  he 
meets  us,  his  observers,  face  to  face.  The  embryology  of 
society  is  open  to  study  in  the  nursery. 

I  think,  accordingly,  that  several  important  hints  at  the 
history  of  societies,  both  animal  and  human,  are  afforded 
by  the  phenomena  of  bashfulness  as  now  described. 
These  I  can  do  no  more  than  mention  at  present. 

Organic   bashfulness  would  seem  to   represent   the   in- 

^  See  the  discussion  of  the  biological  theory  of  'Recapitulation,'  above, 
Chap.  I. 


Inhibitory  Stiggcstion.  157 

stinctive  fear  shown  by  the  higher  Linimals,  coupled  with 
the  natural  family  and  gregarious  instincts  which  they 
have.  This  shades  up  into  the  more  fearless  and  more 
confiding  attitudes  of  certain  passibly  peaceable  creatures, 
which  take  kindly  to  domestication,  and  depend  more  upon 
animal  organizations  and  natural  defences,  such  as  those 
afforded  by  geographical  distribution,  coloration,  habits  of 
life,  etc.,  for  their  protection.  For  the  social  protections 
are  after  all  more  effective  for  the  defence  of  racial  life 
and  propagation  than  the  special  instinctive  armament 
of  individuals.  Then,  of  course,  only  in  man  do  we  find 
the  stage  of  reflective  thought  on  self  and  the  social 
relations  of  self,  which  is  seen  germinating  in  the  child 
in  the  third  year  or  later. 

The  parallel  seems  also  to  be  worth  something  to  the 
anthropologist  when  he  comes  to  inquire  into  the  history 
of  the  human  species.  Admitting  with  Westermarck  that 
man  as  a  species  is  monogamous  and  tends  to  family  life, 
we  should  find  in  his  earliest  history  the  period  corre- 
sponding to  the  organic  bashfulness  of  the  child ;  and  its 
instinctive  presence  in  the  very  young  child  lends  some 
support,  perhaps,  to  Westermarck's  view.  The  later  tribal 
and  nomadic  conditions  possibly  tended  to  release  the 
cords  of  an  instinct  so  purely  defensive,  and  to  bring  in 
the  freer  range  of  peaceful  pursuits  represented,  it  is  con- 
ceivable, by  the  second  stage  of  the  child's  history ;  while 
again  the  stage  of  development  of  the  distinctly  industrial, 
artistic,  and  commercial  life  of  man,  with  its  social  ways 
of  solving  all  problems  of  public  welfare,  corresponds  to 
the  more  reflective  attainments  of  the  period  which  is  seen 
dawning  in  the  true  bashfulness  of  the  three-year-old. 
For  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  recent  writers  are  correct 


158  Suggestion . 

in  finding  that  the  more  refined  egoism  is  a  reflex  from 
the  more  generahzed  sociaUsm ;  a  thesis  which  social  psy- 
chology takes  now  from  the  analyses  of  men  like  Balzac 
and  Bourget  and  the  insights  of  Tarde  and  the  historians 
of  society ;  but  one  which  it  is  itself  quite  able,  I  think,  to 
make  good  by  its  own  methods  of  inquiry. 

§  7.    Hypnotic  Suggestion. 

The  facts  upon  which  the  current  theories  of  hypnotism 
are  based  may  be  summed  up  under  a  few  heads,  and  the 
recital  of  them  will  serve  to  bring  this  class  of  phenomena 
into  the  general  lines  of  classification  drawn  out  in  this 
chapter. 

TJic  Facts.  When  by  any  cause  the  attention  is  held 
fixed  upon  an  object,  say  a  bright  button,  for  a  sufficient 
time  without  distraction,  the  subject  begins  to  lose  con- 
sciousness in  a  progressive  way.  Generalizing  this  simple 
experiment,  we  may  say  that  any  method  or  device  which 
serves  to  secure  undivided  and  prolonged  attention  to  any 
kind  of  a  'suggestion,'  —  be  it  object,  idea,  anything  that 
can  be  thought  about,  —  this  brings  on  what  is  called 
hypnosis  to  a  person  normally  constituted. 

The  Paris  school  of  interpreters  find  three  stages  of 
progress  in  the  hypnotic  sleep :  First,  catalepsy,  character- 
ized by  rigid  fixity  of  the  muscles  in  any  position  in  which 
the  limbs  may  be  put  by  the  experimenter,  with  great 
suggestibility  on  the  side  of  consciousness,  and  anaesthesia 
in  certain  areas  of  the  skin  and  in  certain  of  the  special 
senses;  second,  lethargy,  in  which  consciousness  seems  to 
disappear  entirely,  the  subject  cannot  be  aroused  by  any 
sense  stimulation  by  eye,  ear,  skin,  etc.,  and  the  body  is 
flabby    and    pliable    as   in   natural   sleep  ;   third,  somnain- 


Hypnotic  S^iggcstion.  159 

bulisin,  so  called  from  its  analogies  to  the  ordinary  sleep- 
walking condition  to  which  many  persons  are  subject. 
This  last  covers  the  phenomena  of  ordinary  mesmeric 
exhibitions  at  which  travelling  mesmerists  '  control '  per- 
sons before  audiences  and  make  them  obey  their  com- 
mands. While  other  scientists  properly  deny  these  distinct 
stages  as  such,  they  may  yet  be  taken  as  representing 
extreme  instances  of  the  phenomena,  and  serve  as  points 
of  departure  for  further  discussion. 

On  the  mental  side  the  general  characteristics  of  hyp- 
notic somnambulism  are  as  follows :  i .  TJie  impairing  of 
memory  in  a  peculiar  way.  In  the  hypnotic  condition  all 
affairs  of  the  ordinary  life  are  forgotten ;  on  the  other 
hand,  after  waking,  the  events  of  the  hypnotic  condition 
are  forgotten.  Further,  in  any  subsequent  period  of  hyp- 
nosis the  events  of  the  former  similar  periods  are  remem- 
bered. So  a  person  who  is  habitually  hypnotized  has  two 
continuous  memories ;  one  for  the  events  of  his  normal 
life,  only  when  he  is  normal,  and  one  for  the  events  of 
his  hypnotic  periods,  only  when  he  is  hypnotized. 

2.  Suggestibility  to  a  remarkable  degree.  By  this  is 
meant  the  tendency  of  the  subject  to  have  in  reality  any 
mental  condition  which  is  suggested  to  him.  He  is  sub- 
ject to  suggestions  both  on  the  side  of  his  receptivity  to 
impressions  and  on  the  side  of  action.  He  will  see,  hear, 
remember,  believe,  refuse  to  see,  hear,  etc.,  anything,  with 
some  doubtful  exceptions,  which  may  be  suggested  to  him 
by  word  or  deed,  or  even  by  the  slightest  and  perhaps  un- 
conscious indications  of  those  about  him.  On  the  side  of 
conduct  his  suggestibility  is  equally  remarkable.  Not  only 
will  he  act  in  harmony  with  the  illusions  of  sight,  etc.,  sug- 
gested to  him,  but  he  will  carry  out,  like  an  automaton, 


1 60  Suggestion. 

the  actions  suggested  to  him.  Further,  pain,  pleasure,  and 
the  organic  accompaniments  of  them  may  be  produced  by 
suggestion.  The  arm  may  be  actually  scarred  with  a 
lead-pencil  if  the  patient  be  told  that  it  is  red-hot  iron. 
A  suggested  pain  brings  vaso-motor  and  other  bodily 
changes  that  prove,  as  similar  tests  in  the  other  cases 
prove,  that  simulation  is  impossible  and  the  phenomena 
are  real.  These  phenomena  and  those  given  below  are  no 
longer  based  on  the  mere  reports  of  the  '  mesmerists,'  but 
are  the  recognized  property  of  legitimate  psychology. 

Again,  such  suggestions  may  be  for  a  future  time,  and 
get  themselves  performed  only  when  a  determined  inter- 
val has  elapsed ;  they  are  then  called  deferred  or  post- 
hypnotic suggestions.  Post-hypnotic  suggestions  are  those 
which  include  the  command  not  to  perform  them  until  a 
certain  time  after  the  subject  has  returned  to  his  normal 
condition  ;  such  suggestions  are  —  if  of  reasonably  trifling 
character  —  actually  carried  out  afterward  in  the  normal 
state,  although  the  person  is  conscious  of  no  reason  why 
he  should  act  in  such  a  way,  having  no  remembrance 
whatever  that  he  had  received  the  suggestion  when  hyp- 
notized. Such  post-hypnotic  performances  may  be  de- 
ferred by  suggestion  for  many  months. 

3.  So-called  Exaltation  of  the  mental  faculties,  espe- 
cially of  the  senses :  increased  acuteness  of  vision,  hear- 
ing, touch,  memory,  and  the  mental  functions  generally. 
By  reason  of  this  great  'exaltation,'  hypnotized  patients 
may  get  suggestions  which  are  not  intended  from  experi- 
menters, and  discover  their  intentions  when  every  effort 
is  made  to  conceal  them.  Often  emotional  changes  in 
expression  are  discerned  by  them  ;  and  if  it  be  admitted 
that  their  power  of  logical  and  imaginative  insight  is  cor- 


Hypnotic  Suggestion.  i6i 

respondingly  exalted,  there  is  practically  no  limit  to  the 
patient's  ability  to  read,  simply  from  physical  indications, 
the  mental  states  of  those  who  experiment  with  him. 

4.  So-called  Rapport.  This  term  covers  all  the  facts, 
known  before  the  subject  was  scientifically  investigated, 
by  such  expressions  as  *  personal  magnetism,'  '  will  power ' 
over  the  subject,  etc.  It  is  true  that  one  particular  opera- 
tor alone  may  be  able  to  hypnotize  a  particular  patient ; 
and  in  this  case  the  patient  is,  when  hypnotized,  open  to 
suggestions  only  from  this  person.  He  is  deaf  and  blind 
to  everything  enjoined  by  any  one  else.  It  is  easy  to  see 
from  what  has  already  been  said  that  this  does  not  involve 
any  occult  nerve  influence  or  mental  power.  A  sensitive 
patient  anybody  can  hypnotize,  provided  only  that  the 
patient  have  the  idea  or  conviction  that  the  experimenter 
possesses  such  power.  Now,  let  a  patient  get  the  idea 
that  only  one  man  can  hypnotize  him,  and  that  is  the 
beginning  of  the  hypnotic  suggestion  itself.  It  is  a  part 
of  the  suggestion  that  a  certain  personal  rapport  is  neces- 
sary ;  so  the  patient  must  have  this  rapport.  This  is 
shown  by  the  fact  that,  when  such  a  patient  is  hypnotized, 
the  operator  in  rapport  with  him  can  transfer  the  so-called 
control  to  any  one  else  simply  by  suggesting  to  the  patient 
that  this  third  party  can  also  hypnotize  him.  Rapport,  there- 
fore, and  all  the  amazing  claims  of  charlatans  to  powers  of 
charming,  stealing  another's  personality,  controlling  his 
will  at  a  distance  —  all  such  claims  are  explained,  as  far 
as  they  have  anything  to  rest  upon,  by  suggestion  under 
conditions  of  mental  hyperaesthesia  or  exaltation. 

I  may  now  add  certain  practical  remarks  on  this  subject, 
since  it  is  new,  and  since  these  remarks  may  tend  to  mark 
off  the  range  of  the  phenomena  more  clearly. 

M 


1 6  2  S2iggestion. 

In  general,  any  method  which  fixes  the  attention  to  a 
single  stimulus  long  enough  is  probably  sufficient  to  pro- 
duce hypnosis ;  but  the  result  is  quick  and  profound  in 
proportion  as  the  patient  has  the  idea  that  it  is  going  to 
succeed,  i.e.,  gets  the  suggestion  of  sleep.  It  may  be 
said,  therefore,  that  the  elaborate  performances,  such  as 
passes,  rubbings,  mysterious  incantations,  etc.,  often  re- 
sorted to,  have  no  physiological  effect  whatever,  and 
only  serve  to  work  in  the  way  of  suggestion  upon  the 
mind  of  the  subject.  In  view  of  this  it  is  probable  that 
any  person  in  normal  health  can  be  hypnotized,  provided 
he  is  not  too  sceptical  of  the  operator's  knowledge  and 
powers ;  and,  on  the  contrary,  any  one  can  hypnotize 
another,  provided  he  do  not  arouse  too  great  scepticism, 
and  is  not  himself  wavering  and  clumsy.  It  is  probable, 
however,  that  susceptibility  varies  greatly  in  degree,  and 
that  race  exerts  an  important  influence.  Thus  in  Europe 
the  French  seem  to  be  the  most  susceptible,  and  the  Eng- 
lish and  Scandinavians  the  least  so.  The  impression  that 
weak-minded  persons  are  most  available  is  quite  mistaken. 
On  the  contrary,  patients  in  the  insane  asylums,  idiots, 
etc.,  are  the  most  refractory.  This  is  to  be  expected,  from 
the  fact  that  in  these  cases  power  of  strong,  steady  atten- 
tion is  wanting.  The  only  one  class  of  pathological  cases 
which  seem  peculiarly  open  to  the  hypnotic  influence  is 
that  of  the  hystero-epileptics,  whose  tendencies  are  toward 
extreme  suggestibility.  Further,  one  may  hypnotize  him- 
self—  so-called  aitto-siiggcstion  —  especially  after  having 
been  put  into  the  trance  more  than  once  by  others.^ 

^  It  is  further  evident  that  frequent  hypnotization  is  very  damaging  if  done 
by  the  same  operator,  since  then  the  patient  contracts  a  habit  of  responding 
to  the  same  class  of  suggestions;  and  this  may  influence  his  normal  life.  A 
further  danger  arises  from  the  possibility  that  all  suggestions  have  not  been 


Hypnotic  Si^o^^c'st/o/i.  163 

* 

So-called  '  criminal  suggestions '  may  be  made,  with 
more  or  less  effect,  in  the  hypnotic  state.  Cases  have 
been  tried  in  the  French  courts,  in  which  evidence  for  and 
against  such  influence  of  a  third  person  over  the  criminal 
has  been  admitted.  The  reality  of  the  phenomenon,  how- 
ever, is  in  dispute.  The  Paris  school  claims  that  criminal 
acts  can  be  suggested  to  the  hypnotized  subject  which 
are  just  as  certain  to  be  performed  by  him  as  any  other 
acts.  Such  a  subject  will  discharge  a  blank-loaded  pistol 
at  any  one,  when  told  to  do  so,  or  stab  him  with  a  paper 
dagger.  While  admitting  the  facts,  the  Nancy  theorists 
claim  that  the  subject  knows  the  performance  to  be  a 
farce ;  gets  suggestions  of  the  unreality  of  it  from  the 
experimenters,  and  so  acquiesces.  This  is  probably  true, 
as  is  seen  in  frequent  cases  in  which  patients  have  refused, 
in  the  hypnotic  sleep,  to  perform  suggested  acts  which 
shocked  their  modesty,  veracity,  etc.  This  goes  to  show 
that  the  Nancy  school  are  right  in  saying  that  while,  in 
hypnosis,  suggestibility  is  exaggerated  to  an  enormous 
degree,  still  it  has  limits  in  the  more  well-knit  habits, 
moral  sentiments,   social    opinions,   etc.,   of   the   subjects. 

removed  from  the  patient's  mind  before  his  awaking.  Competent  scientific 
observers  always  make  it  a  point  to  do  this.  It  is  possible  also  that  damaging 
effects  result  directly  to  a  man  from  frequent  hypnotizing;  and  this  is  probable 
to  a  degree,  simply  from  the  fact  that  the  state  is  abnormal  and,  while  it  lasts, 
pathological.  Consequently,  all  general  exhibitions  in  public,  as  well  as  all 
individual  exercises  of  this  kind,  should  be  prohibited  by  law,  and  the  whole 
practical  application,  as  well  as  observation  of  hypnosis  should  be  left  in  the 
hands  of  physicians  who  have  proved  their  fitness  by  an  examination  and  se- 
cured a  certificate  of  license. 

Farther,  Liegeois  suggests  —  what  is  quite  an  unnecessary  resource  — 
that  every  child  should  be  hypnotized  by  a  special  official,  and  the  suggestion 
made  to  him,  once  for  all,  that  no  one  under  any  circumstances  shall  be  able 
to  throw  him  into  hypnosis  again.  In  Russia,  a  decree  (summer,  1S93)  per- 
mits physicians  to  practise  hypnotism  for  purposes  of  cure  under  official  certi- 
ficates.    In  France  public  exhibitions  are  forbidden. 


1 64  Suggestion. 

And  it  further  shows  that  hypnosis  is  probably,  as  they 
claim,  a  temporary  disturbance,  rather  than  a  pathological 
condition  of  mind  and  body. 

There  have  been  many  remarkable  and  sensational  cases 
of  cure  of  disease  by  hypnotic  suggestion  reported,  espe- 
cially in  France.  That  hysteria  in  all  its  manifold  mani- 
festations has  been  relieved  is  certainly  true,  but  that  any 
organic,  structural  disease  has  ever  been  cured  by  hypno- 
tism is  unproven.  It  is  not  regarded  by  medical  authori- 
ties as  an  agent  of  much  therapeutic  value,  and  is  rarely 
employed;  but  it  is  doubtful,  in  view  of  the  natural  preju- 
dice caused  by  the  pretensions  of  charlatans,  whether  its 
merits  have  been  fairly  tested.^ 

Theory.  Two  rival  theories  are  held  as  to  the  general 
character  of  hypnosis.  The  Paris  school  already  referred 
to,  led  by  Charcot,  hold  that  it  is  a  pathological  condition 
which  can  be  induced  only  in  patients  already  mentally  dis- 
eased, or  having  neuropathic  tendencies.  They  claim  that 
the  three  stages  described  above  are  a  discovery  of  great 
importance.^     The  so-called   Nancy  school,  on  the  other 

1  On  the  European  continent  it  has  been  successfully  applied  in  a  great  va- 
riety of  cases;  and  Bernheim  has  shown  that  minor  nervous  troubles,  insom- 
nia, migraines,  drunkenness,  lighter  cases  of  rheumatism,  sexual  and  digestive 
disorders,  together  with  a  host  of  smaller  temporary  causes  of  pain  —  corns, 
cricks  in  back  and  side,  etc.  —  may  be  cured  or  very  materially  alleviated  by 
suggestions  conveyed  in  the  hypnotic  state.  In  many  cases  such  cures  are 
permanently  effected  with  aid  from  no  other  remedies.  In  a  number  of  great 
city  hospitals,  patients  of  recognized  classes  are  at  once  hypnotized,  and  sug- 
gestions of  cure  made.  Liebeault,  the  founder  of  the  Nancy  school,  has  the 
credit  of  having  first  made  use  of  hypnosis  as  a  remedial  agent.  It  is  also  be- 
coming more  and  more  recognized  as  a  method  of  controlling  refractory  and 
violent  patients  in  asylums  and  reformatory  institutions.  It  must  be  added, 
however,  that  *  in  general'  psychological  theory  rather  than  medical  practice 
is  seriously  concerning  itself  with  this  subject. 

^  The  best  books  on  this  side  are  Binet  and  Fere,  Animal  Magnetism ; 


Law  of  Dyiiainogcucsis.  165 

hand,  led  by  Bcrnheim,  deny  the  pathological  character  of 
hypnosis  altogether,  claiming  that  the  hypnotic  condition 
is  nothing  more  than  a  special  form  of  ordinary  sleep 
brought  on  artificially  by  suggestion.  Suggestion,  they 
say,  is  only  an  exaggeration  of  an  influence  to  which  all 
persons  are  normally  subject.  All  the  variations,  stages, 
curious  phenomena,  etc.,  of  the  Paris  school,  say  they,  can 
be  explained  by  this  '  suggestion  '  hypothesis.  The  Nancy 
school  is  completely  victorious,  as  far  as  the  great  mass 
of  the  facts  are  concerned.^ 

The  facts  show  an  intimacy  of  interaction  between  mind 
and  body,  to  which  current  psychology  in  its  psycho-phy- 
sical theories  is  only  beginning  to  do  justice ;  and  it  is 
this  aspect  of  the  whole  matter  which  I  would  emphasize 
in  this  connection.  It  will  be  observed  that  all  the  phases 
of  '  suggestion,'  passed  in  review  in  earlier  sections  of  this 
chapter,  get  direct  illustration  from  similar  phenomena 
occurring  in  hypnosis.  I  need  not  cite  them  again  in  de- 
tail. The  hypnotic  condition  of  consciousness  may,  there- 
fore, be  taken  to  represent  the  thing  called  *  suggestion ' 
most  remarkably. 

§  8.    Lazv  of  Dynainogencsis. 

The  facts  of  suggestion  now  given  may  be  generalized 
under  a  so-called  'law,'  which  current  psychology  and 
biology  agree  in  accepting  as  a  well-established  principle 

Janet,  Aiitomatisme  Psychologique ;  Charcot's  medical  treatises  (^CpAivres 
co7npletes.  Vol.  IX.);   numerous  articles  in  the  Revue  Philosophiqtie. 

1  Their  best  books  are  Moll,  Hypnotism  ;  Bernheim,  Szigi^cstive  Therapeu- 
tics ;  Atucies  notivelles  sur  V Ilypnofisme ;  Ochorowicz,  Mental  Suggestion. 
Cf.  my  popular  articles  *  Among  the  Psychologists  of  Paris '  and  '  Willi 
Bernheim  at  Nancy'  in  the  Nation  (N.Y. ),  July  28,  and  Aug.  II,  1892,  ant! 
'Hypnotism'  in  the  new  edition  (1894)  of  Johnson's   Universal  Cydopa:dia.. 


1 6  6  Suggestion . 

of  the  manifestations  of  organic  and  mental  life.  The 
principle  of  contractility  recognized  in  biology  simply 
states  that  all  stimulations  to  living  matter,  —  from  proto- 
plasm to  the  highest  vegetable  and  animal  structures, — 
if  they  take  effect  at  all,  tend  to  bring  about  movements 
or  contractions  in  the  mass  of  the  organism.  This  is  now 
also  safely  established  as  a  phenomenon  of  consciousness 
—  that  every  sensation  or  incoming  process  tends  to  bring 
about  action  or  outgoing  process.  The  facts  of  suggestion 
now  set  forth  may  be  taken  as,  in  so  far,  an  array  of  evi- 
dence in  support  of  what  we  may  call,  once  for  all,  Dynaino- 
gencsis.  Certain  practical  illustrations  of  it  are  given  in 
the  chapters  which  immediately  precede  :  they  show  also 
the  sure  foundation  of  the  method  of  studying  children 
which  I  have  based  upon  it.  I  shall  accordingly  expect 
no  opposition  to  the  use  of  this  principle  as  the  founda- 
tion-stone of  the  theory  of  organic  development  developed 
subsequently  in  this  work,  however  faulty  my  presentation 
of  it  may  be  in  the  eyes  of  competent  critics  in  either  of 
these  sciences. 

In  attempting,  however,  to  reach  some  kind  of  formula 
of  dynamogenesis  we  encounter  a  certain  difificulty.  For 
when  we  had  occasion  to  inquire  in  an  earlier  place  what 
the  main  character  of  all  suggestion  is,  that  character 
which  constitutes  it  suggestion,  we  found  definitions 
very  conflicting;  and  gave  as  our  own  definition  only  the 
most  general  description  of  the  reaction  called  suggestive, 
i.e.y  that  it  always  issues  in  a  movement  more  or  less 
closely  associated  in  earlier  experience  with  the  particular 
stimulus  in  question. 

This,  it  is  plain,  constitutes  suggestion  as  a  phenome- 
non of  greater  or  less  habit,  taking  hypnotic  suggestion  as 


Law  of  Dyuaviogciicsis.  167 

type,  in  which  prompt  discharges  in  well-formed  pathways 
is  the  striking  fact.  Numerous  instances  among  the  facts 
reported  in  this  chapter  come  to  mind.  The  statement 
ordinarily  made  in  the  more  recent  psychologies,  to  the 
effect  that  the  idea  of  a  movement  is  already  the  begin- 
ning of  that  movement,  serves  to  generalize  these  facts, 
provided  we  understand  by  the  'idea  of  a  movement,'  not 
merely  the  clear  consciousness  of  a  movement,  but  also 
the  vaguest  and  most  subconscious  reminiscences,  feelings, 
intimations  of  movement,  which  cluster  or  hang  about  or 
enter  into,  however  meagrely,  the  state  of  mind  which 
issues  in  the  movement  making  up  the  suggested  reaction. 

But  it  is  just  as  evident,  when  we  recall  the  various 
instances  in  detail,  that  they  have  another  and  different 
aspect.  Very  many  suggestions  seem  to  perform  a  func- 
tion which  is  not  exhausted  when  we  say  that  they  issue 
in  movements.  They  issue  in  movements,  it  is  true  ;  but 
not  in  exactly  the  movements  and  those  alone  which  have 
been  associated  with  these  stimuli  before.  Many  of  them 
seem  to  beget  new  movements,  by  a  kind  of  adaptation  of 
the  organism  —  movements  which  are  an  evident  improve- 
ment upon  those  which  the  organism  has  formerly  accom- 
plished. 

To  make  this  plain  we  have  only  to  recall  some  cases 
from  the  reports  made  in  this  chapter  and  the  earlier  ones. 
The  child  learns  handwriting  by  acting  upon  the  sugges- 
tion which  the  copy  set  before  him  affords.  How  could  he 
control  his  movements  at  all,  if  each  suf?o:estion  called  out 
only  the  movements  which  he  had  already  learned.^  The 
child  adapts  himself  again  to  persons,  and  differently  to 
different  persons,  from  week  to  week.  How  does  he  do 
this  .-*     Persons  of  course  suggest  action  to  him,  but  how 


1 68  Suggestion. 

does  he  manage  to  break  up,  in  appropriate  ways,  the  fixed 
organic  tendencies  to  action  in  which  we  have  found  early 
bashfuhiess  to  consist  ?  The  child  learns  to  estimate  dis- 
tance and  his  visual  experiences  become,  as  we  have  seen, 
suggestions  to  him  of  hand  movements  remarkably  adjusted 
to  his  reach  and  to  the  dimensions  and  directions,  etc., 
of  things.  How  is  this  done  t  And  so  might  more  cases 
be  cited. 

This  aspect  of  suggestion  opens  up  what  is  one  of  the 
main  problems  of  this  book  to  discuss,  the  theory  of 
Accommodation.  It  is  only  in  point  here  to  show  that  this 
thing,  accommodation,  is  a  fact,  and  that  it  consists  in  some 
influence  in  the  organism  which  works  directly  in  the  face 
of  habit.     Suggestion  is  the  only  way  to  break  up  habit. 

We  saw  above,  also,  two  views  as  to  the  presence  and 
influence  of  consciousness  in  this  matter  of  suggestion. 
Some  theorists  hold  that  there  is  no  suggestion  without 
consciousness  ;  others  that  consciousness  is  not  a  necessary 
element.  The  dispute  seems  to  turn  upon  the  predomi- 
nant recognition  in  reactions  of  one  of  the  two  tendencies, 
Habit  or  Accommodation.  It  is  true  and  universal  that 
consciousness  tends  to  disappear  from  reactions  as  they 
are  oftener  repeated  —  as  they  become,  that  is,  more 
habitual.  The  things  we  have  learned  to  do  best, 
most  definitely,  most  exactly,  most  unalterably  in  a  word, 
these  things  require  least  thought,  direction,  feeling,  con- 
sciousness. So  with  our  reflex  and  semi-automatic  ac- 
tions :  they  come  to  go  on,  as  pathological  cases  show, 
without  the  cortex  of  the  brain,  in  cases  when  fainting  or 
forgetfulness  deprive  us  of  all  knowledge  that  we  do  them. 
On  the  other  hand,  we  find  that  whenever  there  is  ac- 
commodation—  the   breaking   up    of   habit,  the   effort   to 


Law  of  Dynamogencsis.  169 

learn,  the  acquirement  of  new  movements,  and  co-ordina- 
tions of  movement — there  consciousness  is  present,  and 
present  in  vivid  and  heightened  form  according  as  the 
habit  fought  against  is  fixed,  and  the  road  to  the  new 
acquisition  an  uphill  road.  The  things  most  new,  difficult, 
imperfect,  hard  to  effect,  these  dwell  in  the  very  focus 
of  our  personal  knowledge  and  attention. 

As  I  said  some  time  ago,  in  summing  up  the  two  differ- 
ent principles :  "  Physiologically,  Habit  means  readiness 
for  function,  produced  by  previous  exercise  of  that  func- 
tion. .  .  .  Psychologically,  it  means  loss  of  oversight,  dif- 
fusion of  attention,  subsiding  consciousness.  .  .  .  Physio- 
logically and  anatomically.  Accommodation  means  the 
breaking  up  of  a  habit,  the  widening  of  the  organic  for 
the  reception  or  accommodation  of  a  new  condition.  Psy- 
chologically, it  means  reviving  consciousness,  concentra- 
tion of  attention,  voluntary  control."  ^ 

So  far  as  we  have  now  gone  we  have  a  right  to  use  the 
principle  of  suggestion,  and  its  statement  in  motor  terms 
as  a  principle  of  dynamogencsis,  whenever  we  mean  to  say 
simply  that  action  follows  stimulus.  But  when  we  come 
to  ask  what  kind  of  action  follows,  in  each  case,  each 
special  kind  of  stimulus,  we  have  two  possibilities  before 
us.  A  habit  may  follow,  or  an  accommodation  may  follow. 
Which  is  it  .^  And  why  is  it  one  rather  than  the  other.? 
These  are  the  questions  of  the  theory  of  organic  develop- 
ment, to  which  our  next  chapters  are  devoted. 

1  Feeli)2g  and  Will,  p.  49. 


CHAPTER   VII. 

The  Theory  of  Development. 
§  I.    Orga7iic  Adaptation  in  General. 

In  the  preceding  discussions  we  have  traced  some 
phases  of  the  development  of  consciousness.  The  two 
great  principles  of  Habit  and  Accommodation  have  been 
noted,  simply,  and  we  have  intimated  incidentally  that 
by  them  two  great  gains  are  made  possible  to  the  organ- 
ism :  first,  the  repetition  of  what  is  worth  repeating, 
with  the  conserving  of  this  worth:  this  is  Habit;  and, 
second,  the  adaptation  of  the  organism  to  new  conditions, 
so  that  it  secures,  progressively,  further  useful  reac- 
tions, which  at  an  earlier  stage  would  have  been  im- 
possible :  this  is  Accommodation.  It  now  remains  to 
give  these  two  principles  a  searching  examination. 

Further,  the  fundamental  fact  of  reaction  itself,  at  what- 
ever stage  it  be  looked  at,  is  expressed  by  the  principle  of 
Dynamogenesis,  which,  when  put  broadly,  reads :  Every 
organic  stimulus  tends  to  express  itself  in  movement, 
This  we  have  been  able  to  illustrate  with  some  chapters  of 
new  observations  and  experiments. 

The  psychological  bearings  of  these  principles  are  taken 
up  below.  It  remains  to  ask  here  whether  we  can  go  fur- 
ther in  a  constructive  way  on  the  physiological  side. 

A  little  reflection  leads  us  to  see  that  the  main  question 

170 


Organic  Adaptation  in   General.  171 

of  adaptation  is  still  unanswered.  It  is  evident  that  repe- 
titions plus  accommodations  give  adaptations;  and  that 
adaptations  involve,  in  some  way,  so-called  'selections.' 
Where,  in  the  function  of  the  organism,  does  the  remark- 
able fact  of  selection  come  in  }  How  does  the  organism 
select  the  proper  things  to  accommodate  itself  to,  and 
refuse  the  improper  .'* 

The  real  meaning  of  this  question  becomes  clear  when 
we  put  it  differently.  Considering  the  state  of  an  organ- 
ism at  any  moment,  with  its  readiness  to  act  in  an  appro- 
priate fashion,  —  say  a  child's  imitation  of  a  movement, 
—  the  appropriateness  of  its  action  may  be  construed  in 
either  of  two  ways :  either  retrospectively  or  prospectively. 
By  construing  it  retrospectively,  I  mean  that  an  organ- 
ism performs  its  appropriate  function  when  it  does  what 
it  has  done  before  —  what  it  is  suited  to  do,  however  it 
may  have  come  to  be  so  suited.  The  child  imitates  my 
movement  because  his  apparatus  is  ready  for  this  move- 
ment. This  is  Habit ;  it  proceeds  by  repetition.  But 
when  we  come  to  ask  how  it  got  to  be  suited  to  do  this 
function  the  first  time,  or  how  it  can  come  to  do  a  new 
function  from  now  on,  —  how  the  child  manages  to  imitate 
a  new  movement,  one  which  he  has  never  made  before,  — 
this  is  the  prospective  reference,  and  this  question  we  must 
now  try  to  answer. 

To  illustrate  from  the  highest  sphere,  that  of  the  volun- 
tary learning  of  new  actions :  Suppose  I  see  a  man  draw 
a  picture,  or  paint  a  landscape,  and  realize  that  it  repre- 
sents a  very  useful  accommodation  of  muscular  move- 
ments, and  then  desire  to  imitate  him.  I  am  not  able 
simply  to  tell  my  muscles  to  do  it,  or  simply  to  will 
to    do  what    he    does.      I    find    my   muscles    are    chained 


172  The   Theory  of  Development. 

down  to  what  I  have  already  learned,  to  what  they  have 
done  before  ;  my  actions,  that  is,  have  the  retrospective 
reference.  So  the  child  sees  me  write  a  letter  or  cut  a 
toothpick,  and  he  is  quite  unable  to  do  it.  He  must 
learn,  we  say.  But  that  is  just  the  question  of  prospec- 
tive reference :  how  is  he  to  learn }  How  is  it  possible 
for  an  organism  to  acquire  any  new  adaptive  movement 
whatever .'' 

When  we  come  to  look  broadly  at  the  biological  series 
and  take  all  the  resources  of  modern  evolution  doctrine 
into  account,  we  find  several  ways  in  which  the  reactions 
of  an  organism  may  get  such  a  *  prospective  reference,' 
all  of  which  are  partial  statements  of  a  more  fundamental 
one,  and  each  of  which  has  its  peculiar  value  in  its  own 
place  in  the  phylogenetic  series.  These  different  ways  in 
which  an  organism  '  learns '  new  accommodations  may  be 
set  forth  in  order. 

I.  Natural  select io7i  as  operative  directly  upon  individual 
organisms.  If  we  suppose,  at  first,  organisms  capable  of 
reacting  to  stimulations  by  random  diffused  movement,  we 
may  then  suppose  the  stimuli  to  which  they  react  to  be 
some  beneficial  and  some  injurious.  If  the  beneficial  ones 
recur  more  frequently  to  some  organisms,  these  would  live 
rather  than  others  to  which  damaging  stimuli  came  more 
often.  The  former,  therefore,  would  be  selected ;  and  it 
amounts  to  the  same  thing  as  if  organisms  of  neutral  char- 
acter had  learned,  each  for  itself,  to  react  to  certain  bene- 
ficial stimuli  only.     This  is  the  current  biological  doctrine. 

But  we  may  go  a  step  further.  Among  the  variations 
in  organic  forms,  it  is  easy  to  see  that  some  of  them  might 
react  in  a  way  to  keep  in  contact  with  the  stimulus,  to  lay 
hold  on  it,  and  so  keep  on  reacting  to  it  again  and  again  — 


Organic  Adaptation  in   General.  173 

just  as  our  rhythmic  action  in  breathing  keeps  the  organ- 
ism in  vital  contact  with  the  oxygen  of  the  air.  These 
organisms  would  get  all  the  benefit  or  damage  of  the 
repetition  or  persistence  of  the  stimulation  and  of  their 
own  reactions,  again  and  again  ;  and  it  is  self-evident  that 
the  beneficial  stimulations  are  the  ones  which  should  be 
maintained  in  this  way,  and  that  the  organisms  which  did 
this  would  live.  The  organisms  which  reacted  in  such 
a  way  as  to  retain  the  damaging  stimulations,  on  the  other 
hand,  by  this  same  process,  would  aid  nature  in  killing 
themselves.  If  this  be  true,  only  those  organisms  would 
survive  which  had  the  variation  of  retaining  useful  stimu- 
lations in  what  I  have  called  in  speaking  of  imitation 
elsewhere  a  '  circular  way  '  of  reacting.  Thus  unicellular 
creatures  of  this  particular  kind  were  selected,  we  may 
suppose,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  from  absolutely  random- 
moving  creatures,  if  any  such  existed  —  a  point  discussed 
below.  And  as  all  others  died  out  in  competition  with 
them,  it  became  a  universal  property  of  vital  organisms  of 
any  degree  of  development  that  they  should  react  to  retain 
their  own  vital  stimulations.  Now  this  again  is  exactly 
the  same  7'esiitt  as  if  originally  neutral  organisms  had  each 
learned  for  itself  to  make  this  particular  kind  of  reactions. 
The  life  principle  has  learned  it,  but  with  the  help  of  the 
stimulating  environment  and  natural  selection.^ 

But  the  question  remains :  what  kind  of  reaction  would 
it  be  that  such  a  creature  would  possess  to  accomplish 
this  result.?  What  would  be  the  nature  of  the  variation.? 
Evidently  the  easiest  answer  to  this  question  is,  that  con- 

1  This  is  one  of  the  essential  modifications  which  I  suggest  to  the  current 
theory  of  biological  development.  More  is  said  of  it  below  in  >;  2  of  this 
chapter,  and  in  Chap.  IX.,  where  particular  evidence  is  cited. 


174  ^/^^'    T/icojy  of  Developvicnt. 

sciousness  with  its  selective  property  arises  here,  and  by 
it  new  actions  are  selected.  But  I  do  not  see  how 
consciousness  could  accomplish  the  fact  of  selection, 
even  though  it  arose  as  a  variation,  until  after  it  had 
itself  experienced  the  reaction  to  be  selected.  This 
would  mean  that  it  had  some  property  of  selecting  out 
during  the  organism's  life-history  certain  kinds  of  reaction 
already  possible  to  this  particular  organism.  But  since  it 
is  possible  for  an  organism  to  have  the  stimulus-retaining 
reactions  which  I  have  described,  simply  by  its  own 
responses,  this  may  be  considered  sufficient  for  its  survival 
anyhow,  whether  it  were  conscious  or  not.  So  I  see  no 
argument  one  way  or  the  other  as  to  the  origin  of  con- 
sciousness at  this  first  stage  of  natural  selection.  The 
case  is  different,  however,  when  we  come  to  consider 
further  development  during  the  life-history  of  tJie  particular 
organism. 

2.  Natural  selection  as  ope^'ative  npon  differe7it  reactio?is 
of  the  same  organism.  The  fact  of  '  life-history '  is  just 
what  distinguishes  an  organism  from  what  is  a  '  mechanical 
arrangement,'  and  not  an  organism.  A  steam  engine  has 
no  life-history  because  it  makes  no  progress,  it  simply 
repeats  a  constant  function.  That  engine  survives  which 
is  best  adapted,  in  its  construction,  to  the  function  of  an 
engine.  That  is  the  principle  already  cited.  It  is  neces- 
sary to  consider  further  how  certain  reactions  of  one 
single  organism  can  be  selected  so  as  to  adapt  the  organ- 
ism better  and  give  it  a  life-history.  Let  us  at  the  outset 
call  this  process  *  organic  selection,'  in  contrast  with  the 
'  natural  selection  '  of  whole  organisms. 

Our  first  principle  would  do  no  more  than  effect  the 
survival  of  organisms  which  repeated  or  retained  useful 


Organic  Adaptation  in   General.  175 

stimulations.  If  this  worked  alone,  every  ehange  in  the 
environment  would  weed  out  all  life  except  those  organ- 
isms which  by  accidental  variation  reacted  already  in  the 
way  demanded  by  the  changed  conditions  —  in  every  case 
new  organisms  showing  variations,  not  in  any  case  new 
elements  of  life-history  in  the  old  organisms.  In  order  to 
the  latter,  we  would  have  to  conceive  one  of  two  things : 
either,  first,  an  innate  capacity  of  the  organism  to  antici- 
pate and  be  ready  for  new  conditions ;  or  second,  some 
modification  of  the  old  reactions  in  an  organism  through 
the  influence  of  new  conditions,  in  such  a  way  that  this 
modified  reaction  serves  to  retain  the  desirable  stimula- 
tions of  the  new  environment,  while  the  old  ways  of 
reacting  do  not.  The  first  of  these  two  conceptions  might 
be  realized  in  turn  by  either  of  two  alternatives :  first,  by 
heredity ;  and  second,  by  the  special  creation  of  each 
organism  for  its  peculiar  environment.  But  the  first  of 
these,  heredity,  is  excluded  by  our  hypothesis  that  we  are 
at  the  beginning  of  the  phylogenetic  series.  The  ques- 
tion would  remain :  How  did  the  ancestors  come  to  be 
adapted }  And  the  second  calls  upon  us  to  give  up  the 
conception  of  phylogeny  altogether.  We  are,  accordingly, 
left  to  the  view  that  the  new  stimulations  wrought  by 
changes  in  the  environment,  themselves  modify  the  reac- 
tions of  an  organism  in  such  a  way  that  these  modified 
reactions  serve  to  hold  or  repeat  the  new  stimulations  as 
far  as  they  are  good,  and  further,  negatively,  in  such  a 
way  that  the  former  reactions  become  under  the  new  con- 
ditions less  useful  or  positively  damaging. 

It  may  be  said  that  the  earlier  application  of  natural 
selection  directly  to  the  salvation  of  organisms  meets  this 
case    also,    provided    organic    forms    arise    by    variations 


1 76  The    Theory  of  Development. 

which  are  suited  to  react  to  the  new  environment.  And  it 
is  possible  to  hold,  I  think,  that  phylogenetic  progress 
from  father  to  son  is  secured  in  that  way :  a  point  which 
has  further  discussion  below.  But  the  facts  show,  at  any 
rate,  that  individual  organisms  do  acquire  new  adaptations 
in  their  lifetime,^  and  that  is  our  first  problem.  If,  in 
solving  it,  we  find  a  principle  which  may  also  serve  as  a 
principle  of  race  development,  then  we  may  possibly  use 
it  against  the  'all-sufficiency  of  natural  selection,'  or  in  its 
support. 

The  one  kind  of  organic  process  which  would  accom- 
plish the  selection  of  reactions  in  an  organism's  life-history 
is  the  one  which  we  actually  find  —  which  is  to  say  that 
our  theory  waits  as  it  should  upon  facts.  There  is  a 
process  by  which  the  theatre  of  the  application  of  natural 
selection  is  transferred  from  the  outside  relations  of  the 
organism,  its  relations  to  its  environment,  to  the  inside 
relations  of  the  organism.  It  takes  the  form  of  the  fiuic- 
tional  adjitstinciit  of  the  life  processes  to  variations  in  its 
own  motor  respojises,  so  that  beneficial  reactions  are  se- 
lected from  the  entire  mass  of  responses. 

This  process  is  —  to  state  my  point  before  discussing 
it  —  the  neurological  analogue  of  the  hedonic  eonscionsness  ; 
and  the  two  aspects  in  which  the  happy  variation  shows 
itself  in  the  consciousness  of  the  higher  organisms  are 
pleasiu'e   and  pain.     These  points    may    be    summed    up 

1  I  know  a  further  ol)jcction  may  be  made,  and  it  may  be  as  well  to  state  it 
here,  while  reserving  its  discussion  for  a  later  place  (§  3  of  this  chapter). 
It  may  be  said  that  even  in  the  life  of  the  individual  new  actions  are  not 
acquired;  they  simply  serve  in  the  individual  to  show  the  details  of  the  varia- 
tion which  the  individual  has  got  by  inheritance.  On  that  view  the  new 
functions  do  not  secure  gains  for  the  following  generation,  hut  only  put  in 
evidence  the  variations  already  secured  over  the  earlier  generation. 


Organic  Adaptation  in   General.  177 

for  discussion  in  the  general  proposition  :  tJie  lifc-Jiistory 
of  organisms  involves  from  the  start  the  presence  of  the 
organic  analogue  of  the  Jiedonie  consciousness. 

From  what  has  been  said  it  is  clear  that,  in  order  to 
life-history  in  an  organism,  it  must  have  in  its  central 
processes  not  only  the  facile  function  required  by  habit- 
ual discharge,  but  also  some  means  of  anticipating  new- 
stimulations,  and  so  of  utilizing  them  to  its  own  advantage. 
The  empirical  analysis  of  pleasure  and  pain  states  requires 
the  recognition  of  these  two  facts,  on  any  theory  of  the 
hedonic  consciousness,  i.e.,  first,  pleasure  accompanies 
normal  psycho-physical  process,  or  its  advancement  by 
new  stimulations  which  are  vitally  good ;  and  second,  pain 
accompanies  abnormal  psycho-physical  process,  or  the  an- 
ticipation of  its  being  brought  about  by  new  stimulations 
which  are  vitally  bad.^  This  is  generalized  in  the  princi- 
ples, current  since  Bain  insisted  upon  them,  that  pain  is 
indicative  of  a  physiological  process  which  is  inhibitory  of 
the  function  which  occasions  the  pain,  and  pleasure,  on  the 
other  hand,  advances  its  corresponding  function  ;  although, 
as  I  aim  to  show  in  the  following  pages,  the  formula- 
tion of  Bain  requires  important  modifications.  In  a  later 
place  I  speak  further  of  the  rise  of  consciousness  as  this 
view  seems  to  implicate  it.'-^ 

Advantage  has  now  been  seen  to  lie  in  reactions  by 
which  certain  stimulations  are  retained  or  repeated  and 
certain  others  avoided.  Now  the  former  are  the  reac- 
tions to  stimulations  which  give  pleasure,  the  latter  reac- 
tions to  those  which  give  pain.  The  general  scheme  of 
Meynert,  which  identifies   the  pleasure-giving   process   in 

1  Baldwin,  Handbook  of  Psychology,  II.,  Chaps.  V.,  XI.  (in  substance). 

2  Cf.  §  4  of  this  chapter. 

N 


1 78  The   Theory  of  Development. 

some  way  with  that  of  outreaching  movements,  and  the 
pain-giving  process  in  some  way  with  that  of  withdrawing 
movements, — expansions  on  the  one  hand,  and  contractions 
on  the  other,  —  affords,  disregarding  details  which  I  need 
not  now  dwell  upon,  support  to  this  requirement.^  Richet 
expresses  the  general  facts  very  clearly ;  beginning  with 
pain,  he  says,  "  there  takes  place  a  series  of  general  move- 
ments of  flexion,  as  if  the  animal  wished  to  make  itself 
smaller  and  to  offer  less  surface  to  the  pain.  .  .  .  With 
man,  as  with  all  other  animals,  we  find  the  same  general 
movements  of  flexion  and  extension,  corresponding  to  feel- 
ings of  pain  and  pleasure.  Pleasure  corresponds  to  a 
movement  of  spreading  out,  dilatation,  extension ;  on  the 
contrary,  in  pain  we  draw  back,  shut  ourselves  up,  by 
general  movements  of  flexion."  ^ 

It  may  be  objected,  however,  that  this  does  not  meet  the 
need  of  anticipating  adjustment;  and  such  an  objection  to 
Meynert's  own  view  is,  I  think,  well  taken.  Admitting  the 
truth  of  the  theory  of  Meynert,  however,  as  far  as  it  goes, 
and  its  essential  conformity  to  the  requirements  of  a  true 
theory  of  motor  development,  we  may  further  find  from 
the  two  correspondences  mentioned  the  element  which  is 
still  lacking,  and  which  can  only  be  supplied  by  an  ade- 
quate theory  of  the  physical  basis  of  pleasure  and  pain. 

If  development  is  by  repetition,  and  if  repetition  can  be 
secured  only  by  a  variation  which  brings  about  what  I 
have  designated  above  a  'circular  reaction,'  or  one  which 


1  Popiil'dr-wissenschaflliche  Vortr'dge^  pp.  41  ff.  Meynert's  theory  has 
recently  been  given  some  experimental  support  by  Miinsterberg,  Beitrdge  ziir 
exper.  Psych.^  heft  4.  For  the  detailed  treatment  of  such  so-called  *  Organic 
Imitations,'  see  below,  Chap.  IX. 

2  V Homme  et  V Intelligence,  p.  9,  quoted  by  Ward. 


Organic  Adaptation  in   General.  i  79 

repeats  or  retains  its  own  stimulation,  then  a  new  stimulus 
can  be  accommodated  to  only  within  the  limits  inside  of 
which  the  organ  can  prepare  itself,  on  the  basis  of  former 
processes,  to  bring  about  such  a  reaction  as  will  tend  to 
retain  this  kind  of  stimulus  for  itself.  This  is  accom- 
plished, /;/  tJic  ivJiole  range  of  motor  acconnnodations  frovi  tJic 
protozoa  zv/iich  swarm  to  the  ligJit  to  tJie  most  difficult  feat 
of  the  acrobat,  by  what  I  may  generalize  under  the  phrase 
'law  of  excess'  ;  it  is  an  application  within  the  organism  of 
the  principle  upon  which  the  natural  selection  of  particu- 
lar organisms  is  secured  —  the  principle  commonly  known 
as  'over-production.'  But,  generally,  the  law  of  'excess' 
may  be  stated  somewhat  as  follows :  the  accommodation  of 
an  organism  to  a  new  stimulation  is  secured,  apart  from 
happy  accidents,  by  the  continued  or  repeated  action  of  that 
stimulation,  and  this  repetition  is  secured,  not  by  the  selec- 
tion beforeJiand  of  this  stimidation  nor  by  its  fortuitous 
occurrence,  alone,  but  by  the pivximate  reiiistatement  of  it  by  a 
discharge  of  the  energies  of  the  organism,  concentrated  as  far 
as  may  be  for  the  excessive  stimulation  of  the  organs  most 
nearly  fitted  by  foimer  habit  to  get  this  stimulation  again} 

Assuming  that  such  a  supplement  to  the  current  psy- 
cho-physical theories  of  pleasure-pain  is  necessary,  and 
that  the  details  are  left  open  of  what  the  actual  cellu- 
lar processes  are  by  which  this  '  excess  discharge '  is 
secured,  our  task  is  to  explain  and  justify  this  law  of  Ex- 
cess. This  I  shall  endeavour  to  do,  dividing  the  cases 
of    Accommodation    or   Adaptation    into    three    heads,  — 

1  The  negative  of  concentration  or  its  reverse  supplies  the  conditions  of  re- 
treat from  a  damaging  stimulation  —  I  suppose  some  form  of  draining,  with 
Darwin's  '  antithetic '  motor  action  and  Meynert's  Ahuehrbezvegutigen.  I  shall 
develop  only  the  positive  side. 


i8o  The   Theory  of  Development. 

the  word  *  adaptation  '  being  used  as  in  biology  for  the 
process  by  which  accommodation  is  secured.  We  will 
have  to  show  that  the  three  certain  stages  of  adaptation 
are  brought  under  the  formula  of  *  organic  selection  '  by 
means  of  the  auxiliary  principle  of  '  Excess.'  To  make 
these  three  spheres  plain  to  psychologists  we  may  desig- 
nate them  as,  first,  *  biological  adaptations '  (the  sensitive 
plant,  the  curling  tendril  of  the  vine,  heliotropism,  the 
behaviour  of  the  brainless  frog);  second,  the  reactions  of 
consciousness  when  so-called  *  reflex  attention '  dominates 
(animals  without  their  hemispheres,  the  learning  of  in- 
fants and  idiots  short  of  voluntary  effort) ;  third,  the  con- 
scious selection  of  ends  and  their  pursuit  by  volition 
(voluntary  attention,  cortical  action,  '  conduct ').  These 
three  forms  of  adaptation  are  treated  in  the  course  of  this 
work  under  the  headings,  respectively,  of  *  Organic  Imi- 
tation,' 'Conscious  Imitation,'  and  'Volition.'  If  suc- 
cessfully made  out,  this  will  present  to  us  a  theory  of 
unity  in  the  motor  life,  and  an  addition  to  the  evolution 
theory  acceptible  to  psychologists. 

Before  proceeding  further,  however,  it  may  be  well  to 
state  the  theory  hitherto  propounded  and  advocated  by 
other  psychologists,  as  well  as  by  biologists,  and  to  exam- 
ine it  in  view  of  the  requirements  now  indicated ;  this 
comparison  will  also  serve  to  bring  out  my  own  positions 
more  clearly. 

§  2.    Current  Biological  Theory  of  Adaptation. 

It  is  clear  that  we  are  led  to  two  relatively  distinct 
questions :  questions  which  are  now  familiar  to  us  when 
put  in  the  terms  covered  by  the  words  *  phylogenesis '  and 
'ontogenesis.'     First,  how  has  the  development  of  organic 


Current  Biolo-^ical  Theory  nf  A  dap  tat 


'ion.      i8i 


life  proceeded,  showing  constantly,  as  it  does,  forms  of 
greater  complexit)'  and  higher  adaptation  ?  This  is  the 
phylogenetic  question  ;  and  as  we  should  expect,  this  is 
the  question  over  which  biologists  have  had  their  most 
earnest  and  lasthig  controversy.  This  is  also  the  only 
question  which  has  interested  biologists.  But  the  second 
question,  the  ontogenetic  question,  is  of  equal  importance  : 
the  question,  How  does  the  individual  organism  manage 
to  adjust  itself  better  and  better  to  its  environment }  How 
is  it  that  we,  or  the  brute,  or  the  amoeba,  can  leant  to 
do  anytJdngf  This  is  the  question  which  has  interested 
psychologists  —  as  far  as  they  have  shown  interest  at  all 
in  genetic  theories. 

This  latter  problem  is  the  most  urgent,  difficult,  and 
neglected  question  of  the  new  genetic  psychology.  How 
can  an  organism,  whether  with  or  without  consciousness, 
ever,  under  any  circumstances,  get  a  new  and  better- 
adapted  function  .^  This  is  the  inquiry  which  I  wish  to 
take  up  first,  describing  the  only  view  which  has  much 
currency  and  criticising  it.  For  in  answer  to  this  question 
there  is  practically  only  one  theory  in  the  field,  that  of 
Bain,  in  his  latest  formulation  of  which  he  shows  its  con- 
formity to  evolution  requirements.  It  is  based  upon  Mr. 
Spencer's  earlier  theory,  but  has  certain  modifications 
w^hich  Mr.  Bain  states  in  a  passage  which  I  quote  below. 
I  shall  hereafter  refer  to  the  view  now  described  as  the 
'  Spencer-Bain  theory.' 

Mr.  Bain's  view  is  this  :  the  organism  is  endowed  with 
spontaneous  movement,  a  certain  spontaneity  of  action 
which  must  be  assumed.  Certain  of  these  spontaneous 
movements  happen  by  *  lucky  chance '  to  succeed  in  bring- 
ing  the    organism    into    some   special    adjustment,   better 


1 82  The   Theory  of  Development. 

exposure,  better  protection,  easier  function,  etc. ;  these 
movements  are  accompanied  by  pleasure.  The  pleasure 
lingers  in  the  consciousness  of  the  creature  in  connec- 
tion with  the  memory  of  the  particular  movement  which 
brought  it;  and  the  memory  of  the  pleasure  serves  to 
incite  the  creature  to  execute  the  same  movement  again, 
whenever  the  same  external  conditions  present  themselves. 
The  repetition  thus  secured  serves  to  fix  the  new  adjust- 
ment as  a  permanent  acquisition  on  the  part  of  the 
organism. 

It  is  evident  that  on  this  view  of  adaptation,  Mr.  Bain 
assumes  consciousness  with  pleasure  and  pain  in  the 
organism  and  also  assumes  an  association  between  the 
sense  of  the  pleasure  and  the  sense  or  mental  picture  of 
the  movement  which  brought  the  pleasure.  A  third  sup- 
position should  also  be  especially  noted,  —  because  it  is 
usually  so  tacit  an  assumption  as  to  go  quite  unremarked, 
—  namely,  that  the  circumstances  or  environment  remain 
sufficiently  constant  to  enable  the  creature  to  use  the 
association  between  the  pleasure  and  the  movement.  He 
must  have  various  movements  stimulated  over  again  as 
before,  and  among  them  the  one  which  before  gave  the 
pleasure,  in  order  that  the  pleasant  memory  of  this  par- 
ticular one  may  be  suggested  along  with  the  other  possible 
ones.  Granting  these  assumptions,  we  have  a  means  of 
'selecting'  the  useful  movement  —  what  I  have  called 
'organic  selection.' 

The  order  of  the  'factors  of  adaptation,'  as  we  may  call 
the  elements  involved  in  Bain's  schemes,  is  clearly  this: 
random  movement,  chance-adaptation,  pleasure,  memory 
of  pleasure  associated  with  memory  of  movement,  adapted 
movement.      In  this  order  I  wish  to  note  especially  the 


Ctcmrnt  Biological  Theory  of  Adaplaiiou.      1S3 

distinction  between  adaptive  movement,  i.e.,  the  move- 
ment which  by  chance  secures  the  adaptation,  and  adapted 
movement,  i.e.,  the  movement  which  follows  by  association 
with  the  pleasure  which  is  recalled  in  memory. 

Passing  now  to  Mr.  Spencer's  theory,  we  find  a  purely 
physiological  construction.^  He  supposes  that  originally 
simple  contractility  of  protoplasm  leads  to  a  diffused  con- 
tractile discharge  throughout  the  mass ;  this  results  in 
random  movements  of  great  variety.  Some  of  these  move- 
ments are  by  chance  more  adaptive  than  others,  and  by  this 
fact  a  larger  draught  of  energy  tends  to  concentrate  itself 
upon  the  channels  of  discharge  which  carry  out  these 
movements.  This  wave  of  '  heightened  nervous  energy ' 
fixes  an  anatomical  *  path  of  least  resistance,'  which  so 
comes  to  represent  the  habits  and  permanent  adaptations 
of  the  organism. 

The  coincidence  of  these  two  views  may  be  best  ex- 
pressed in  the  terms  of  one  of  the  authors.  Mr.  Bain 
writes: 2  "■  My  leading  postulates  —  Spontaneity,  the  Con- 
tinuing of  an  action  that  gives  pleasure,  and  the  Contiguous 
growth  of  an  accidental  connection  —  are  all  involved  in 
Mr.  Spencer's  explanation  of  the  development  of  our  activ- 
ity. .  .  .  The  spontaneous  commencement  is  expressed  by 
him  as  a  diffused  discharge  of  muscular  energy  {^Psychology ^ 
Vol.  I.,  p.  544).  He  considers  that  as  nervous  structures 
become  more  complicated,  every  special  muscular  excite- 
ment is  accompanied  by  some  general  muscular  excitement. 
Along  with  the  concentrated  discharge  to  particular  mus- 
cles, the  ganglionic  plexuses  inevitably  carry  off  a  certain 
diffused  discharge  to  the  muscles  at  large ;  and  this  dif- 

1  Spencer,  Princ.  of  Psychology,  I.,  v^§  227  ff. 

2  Emotions  a^id  Will,  3d  ed.,  1888,  pp.  3^8  f. 


184  The   Theory  of  Development. 

fused  discharge  may  lead  to  the  happy  movement  suitable 
to  some  emergency. 

''  This  is  the  doctrine  of  Spontaneity  in  a  very  contracted 
shape;  too  contracted  in  my  judgment  for  the  requirements 
of  the  case,  I  have  adverted  to  the  inferiority  of  the  dif- 
fused wave  accompanying  a  central  process,  whether  active 
or  emotional,  such  as  is  here  assumed.  If  another  source 
of  chance  muscular  movements  can  be  assigned,  and  if  that 
source  presents  advantages  over  the  diffused  discharge,  we 
ought  to  include  it  in  our  hypothesis.  .  .  .  Mr.  Darwin 
expresses  what  is  tantamount  to  the  spontaneity  of  move- 
ment thus :  *  When  the  sensorium  is  strongly  excited,  the 
muscles  of  the  body  are  generally  thrown  into  violent 
action.'  '  Involuntary  and  purposeless  contractions  of  the 
muscles  of  the  chest  and  glottis,  excited  in  the  above 
manner,  may  have  first  given  rise  to  the  emission  of  vocal 
sounds'  {Expression,  pp.  ^2,  83).  This  is  spontaneous 
commencement  under  circumstances  of  strong  excitement ; 
but  I  have  endeavoured  to  show  that  excitement  is  unnec- 
essary, and  that  spontaneity  is  a  fact  of  the  ordinary 
working  of  the  organs. 

'*  The  second  indispensable  requisite  to  voluntary  acqui- 
sition, as  well  as  to  the  consolidation  of  instinctive  powers, 
is  some  force  that  clenches  and  confirms  some  successful 
chance  coincidence.  Mr.  Spencer's  view  of  this  operation 
is  given  thus  :  '  After  success  will  immediately  come  pleas- 
urable sensations  with  an  accompanying  large  draught  of 
nervous  energy  towards  the  organs  employed.'  'The  lines 
of  communication  through  which  the  diffused  discharge 
happened  in  this  case  to  pass  have  opened  a  new  way  to 
certain  wide  channels  of  escape;  and  consequently  they 
have  suddenly  become  lines  through  which  a  larger  quan- 


Current  Biological  Theory  of  Adaptatioii.      185 

tity  of  molecular  motion  is  drawn,  and  lines  which  are  so 
rendered  more  permeable  than  before.' 

*'  Here  is  assumed  the  Law  of  Pleasure  and  Pain. 
Pleasure  is  accompanied  by  heightened  nervous  energy, 
which  nervous  energy  finds  its  way  to  the  lines  of  commu- 
nication that  have  been  opened  up  by  the  lucky  coinci- 
dence. There  is  assumed  as  a  consequence  the  third  of 
the  above  postulates  —  the  contiguous  adhesion  between 
the  two  states,  the  state  of  feeling  and  the  appropriate 
muscular  state.  The  physical  expression  given  by  Mr. 
Spencer  to  this  result  is,  I  have  no  doubt,  correct  —  'the 
opening  up  of  lines  of  discharge  that  draw  off  large 
amounts  of  molecular  motion.'  " 

Bain's  three  postulates,  as  here  summed  up  by  himself, 
touch  the  inevitable  requirements  of  a  theory,  in  my  opin- 
ion, as  will  be  seen  from  the  foregoing  pages.  For  there 
are  three  requirements  ;  first,  to  get  movements  (his  '  spon- 
taneity,' as  a  substitute  for  Spencer's  *  diffused  discharge' 
and  Darwdn's  *  purposeless  contractions');  second,  to  get 
selections  made  from  these  movements  (his  '  accidental 
success,'  of  certain  movements);  and  third,  'some  force 
that  clenches  and  confirms  some  successful  chance  coinci- 
dence '  ('  pleasure  and  pain,'  identified  with  Spencer's 
*'  heightened  nervous  energy  which  finds  its  way  to  the 
lines  of  communication  that  have  been  opened  up  by  the 
lucky  coincidence  "). 

But  it  is  evident  that  the  truth  —  if  it  be  true  —  of  '  spon- 
taneity '  in  developed  organisms  does  not  invalidate  or  even 
supersede  Spencer's  'diffused  discharge';  for  the  phylo- 
genetic  explanation  of  spontaneity  —  the  question  how  did 
spontaneity  itself  arise  —  must  rest  on  some  such  hypoth- 
esis as  Spencer's  theory  of  discharge,  or  of  contractility 


1 86  The   Theory  of  Development. 

in  response  to  stimulation.  So  we  may  pass  that  postulate 
over  without  further  question.  But  the  second  question 
conies  :  given  movements  —  by  either  of  these  principles, 
both,  or  neither  —  how  are  some  of  them  selected.'^  Here, 
again,  the  answer  comes  from  both  authors :  by  chance 
adaptation.  Of  course,  we  are  told,  some  of  these  random 
movements  are  likely  to  be  more  adaptive  than  others. 
Suppose  the  creature  is  suffering  for  want  of  food,  the 
movements  which  hit  upon  food  are  then  the  adaptive 
ones.  These  are  then  in  so  far  selected.  This  we  may 
admit  as  most  likely.  But  in  how  far  —  again  it  is  asked  — 
is  the  organism  able  to  do  them  a  second  time  1  How  are 
these  successful,  good,  advantageous  movements  kept  up  ? 
*  Pleasure  and  pain '  is  at  once  on  everybody's  lips,  Bain's, 
Spencer's,  ct  al.  The  adaptive  movement  gives  pleasure  : 
this  secures  the  repetition.  But,  yet  again,  how }  Evi- 
dently by  association,  we  are  told.  The  lucky  movement 
gives  pleasure ;  it  is  done  again  to  secure  the  pleasure 
again,  for  of  all  the  movements  which  are  incipiently  stim- 
ulated by  the  environment,  that  one  which  is  remembered 
as  having  given  pleasure,  that  one  is  done  again.  The 
movements  must  be  incipiently  stimulated,  that  is,  the 
environment  must  be  pretty  constant,  as  was  said  above, 
for  otherwise  we  may  say :  for  an  association  one  term 
must  be  given ;  either  the  pleasure  to  bring  up  the  move- 
ment, or  the  movement  to  bring  up  the  pleasure.  We 
must  have  the  presence  of  the  movement  in  some  kind  of 
possibility,  in  order  to  get  the  sense  of  the  pleasure  to  be 
derived  from  doing  it.  Here  Mr.  Spencer's  theory,  on  the 
organic  side,  gives  us  an  answer ;  and  Bain,  as  it  seems  to 
me,  adopts  it  as  a  supplement,  in  the  quotation  made  above 
from  his  third  edition,  directly  from  Spencer.     **  Here  is 


Cttrrent  Biological  Theory  of  Adaptation.      187 

assumed,"  says  Bain,  "the  Maw  of  pleasure  and  pain.' 
Pleasure  is  accompanied  by  hciglitencd  Jicrvous  energy^ 
which  nervous  energy  finds  its  way  to  the  lines  of 
communication  that  have  been  opened  up  by  the  lucky 
coincidence." 

But  now  we  reach  a  point  in  the  development  of  this 
theory  at  which  difficulties  begin  to  appear.  It  is  evident 
that  two  cases  are  possible  in  the  matter  of  the  environ- 
ment :  the  case  in  which  the  stimulus  calling  out  the  lucky 
movement  continues  to  act,  and  the  case  in  which  this 
stimulus  stops  acting.  Suppose  it  be  light  —  sunlight  — 
falling  on  a  protozoon,  and  a  movement  results  which 
exposes  the  creature  better  to  the  light,  and  this  exposure 
is  beneficial  and  pleasurable.  It  is  clear  that  the  sunlight 
may  continue  upon  it,  and  so  keep  up  its  good  influence ; 
or,  on  the  other  hand,  the  sun  may  draw  away  and  be 
succeeded  by  gloom.  This  theory,  it  is  evident,  makes 
the  continuance  of  the  adaptation  dependent  upon  the 
continuance  or  repetition  of  the  stimulus.  What  good  to 
the  organism  to  remember  that  it  elongated  itself  by 
chance  upward,  let  us  say,  in  the  light,  and  that  this 
gave  pleasure,  if  there  be  no  longer  any  light  in  which  to 
elongate  itself  upward  .^  If  it  do  it  in  the  dark,  it  again 
exposes  itself  to  chance ;  for  such  an  elongation  in  the 
dark  may  be  the  very  reaction  which  will  destroy  it.  So 
all  adaptive  reactions  on  this  theory  can  be  adapted  reac- 
tions—  real  adjustments,  acquisitions  —  only  in  conditions 
of  relative  regularity  and  frequency  of  stimulation. 

This  theory,  therefore,  leaves  the  organism  to  the  risk 
of  getting  repetitions  of  stimulus  by  accident ;  just  as  it 
got  the  adaptation  by  the  chance  of  a  lucky  movement, 
so  it  can  keep  it  only  by  the  chance  of  the  recurrence  of 


1 88  TJie   Theory  of  Development. 

the  stimulus.  The  organism  waits  the  second  time  upon 
chance,  just  as  it  did  the  first  time.  The  postulate  that 
pleasure  from  the  lucky  movement  is  the  agent  of  adapta- 
tion, succeeds,  therefore,  only  when  the  environing  agencies 
of  stimulation  are  regular  and  constantly  available. 

This  necessity  of  regularity  of  conditions  is  put  by 
Mr.  Joseph  Jastrow  in  these  words  :  "  The  existence  of 
habits  implies  an  environment  sufficiently  constant  to  re- 
peatedly present  to  the  organism  the  same  or  closely  simi- 
lar conditions."  ^  And  writers  generally  assume,  if  they 
do  not  say,  that  the  organism  is  developed  by  the  repeti- 
tion of  stimulations  which  storm  it,  by  the  laws  of  their 
own  action,  coming  to  act  upon  it  while  it  remains  in  its 
place  to  be  acted  upon.  Complexity  of  adaptation  is  then 
secured  by  the  compounding  of  the  reactions  which  are 
sustained  in  this  way.^ 

Again,  another  question  must  be  asked  in  regard  to 
the  postulate  of  '  heightened  nervous  energy '  which  both 
Spencer  and  Bain  make  the  physiological  counterpart  of 
pleasure.  The  pleasure  resulting  from  the  first  acciden- 
tally adaptive  movement,  issues  in  a  heightened  nervous 
discharge  toward  the  organs  v/hich  made  the  movement,  a 
discharge  which  finds  its  way  to  the  same  channels  as 
before,  and  so  makes  it  likely  that  the  same  movement  will 
be  repeated,  the  external  conditions  remaining  the  same. 
By  these  discharges  this  movement  gets,  of  course,  a 
better  chance  of  being  performed  on  subsequent  occasions. 
So  the  organism  fixes  its  adaptations. 

Let  us  accept  this  and  say  that  something  equivalent  to 

^Popular  Science  Monthly,  November,  1892. 

'■^  More  is  said  of  this  compounding  tendency,  below,  Chap.  VIII.,  §  4. 
Cf.  Spencer's  exposition  of  it,  loc.  cit.  Vol.  I.,  v:i§  231  ff. 


Currcjii  Biological  Theory  of  Adaptation.      189 

*  heightened  nervous  energy  '  alone  can  explain  the  repeti- 
tion of  reactions  which  are  both  useful  and  pleasurable. 
We  may  call  this,  then,  for  convenience,  the  principle  of 

*  Motor  Excess,'  and  say  that  pleasure  and  pain  can  be 
agents  of  accommodation  and  development  only  if  the 
one,  pleasure,  carry  with  it  the  phenomenon  of  *  motor 
excess,'  and  the  other,  pain,  the  reverse  —  probably  some 
form  of  inhibition  or  of  antagonistic  contraction. 

Our  question  then  is  this :  What  is  the  reason  that  the 
movements  which  are  accidentally  more  adaptive  than 
others,  give  pleasure  ?  Is  there  anything  in  one  move- 
ment, as  such,  more  than  another,  that  it  should  give 
pleasure  }  How  can  it  matter  to  the  protozoon,  for  exam- 
ple, whether  it  elongate  itself  upward,  or  flatten  itself 
downward,  that  it  should  feel  better  in  one  case  than  in 
the  other  ? 

The  only  answer  evidently  is,  that  the  pleasure  is  not  in 
the  movement  in  itself  but  in  what  the  movement  gets  for 
the  organism.  The  protozoon  may  elongate  itself  upward 
without  pleasure  possibly  in  the  dark,  or  with  positive  pain. 
The  plant  may  turn  upward  only  in  the  light  (heliotro- 
pism),  and  then  downward  only  in  the  dark  (geotropism), 
to  show  its  adaptations.  It  is  the  sunlight  which  the 
creature  gets  from  its  elongation  upward  which  gives  the 
pleasure.^ 

Yet  that  the  current  theory,  as  held  by  psychologists, 
makes  the  first  adaptive  movement  accidental,  and  the 
pleasure  which  serves  as  agent  of  accommodation  to  result 

1  A  case  which  fulfils  the  details  of  this  illustration  is  to  be  found  in  certain 
shell-fish  (muscles)  which  respond  variably  to  light  and  shade.  Some  species 
withdraw  when  shadows  are  thrown  upon  them;  certain  others  withdraw  when 
light  falls  on  them;  and  yet  others  respond  by  contraction  to  both  light  and 
shade.     See  Nagel,  in  Biol.  Centralb.,  XIV.,  1S94,  p.  385. 


190  The   Theory  of  Development. 

only  from  that  movement,  may  be  seen  from  such  state- 
ments as  the  following  from  Hoffding,  who  accepts  Bain's 
postulate  of  spontaneity  in  developed  organisms.  He 
says :  "  There  may  be  accommodation  even  before  con- 
sciousness by  means  of  reflex  movement.  In  this,  move- 
ment is  not  immediately  brought  about  by  the  internal 
state,  but  by  a  stimulus  from  the  external  world,  or  from 
a  part  of  the  organism."  ^ 

As  soon  as  it  is  criticised  this  bald  position  becomes 
irrational,  as  every  one  will  admit :  for  the  action  of 
the  sunlight  it  is  which  stimulates  the  organic  and  vital 
processes,  aids  nutrition,  sets  the  organism  into  its  life 
rhythms,  etc.  This  is  universally  the  case.  It  is  what  the 
organism  gets  by  the  movements  which  minister  to  its  life  ; 
that  is  the  original  pleasure-giving  thing,  not  the  mere 
fact  of  one  movement  rather  than  another. 

And  yet,  as  evident  as  this  is,  I  cannot  find  it  any- 
where clearly  brought  out  in  the  literature  of  this  topic. 
It  may  have  been  taken  for  granted  by  every  one,  we 
could  well  believe,  except  that  when  we  come  to  generalize 
this  view,  we  find  that  the  theory  of  adaptation  takes  on 
a  meaning  very  different  from  that  usually  understood. 
If  it  is  the  organism's  stimulations,  such  as  food  supply, 
contact  with  the  oxygen  of  the  air,  equilibrium  under  the 
action  of  gravity,  etc.  —  if  it  is  such  things  which  give  the 
organic  bases  of  pleasure  —  then  these  it  is  which  serve 
to  bring  about  the  motor  excess  discharge  which  pro- 
duces the  abundance  and  variety  of  movements  necessary 
to  selection.  But  if  so  again,  then  we  do  not  need  the 
first  accidentally  adaptive  movemeftt  to  give  pleasure,  and 
through  pleasure  so  to  secure  the  excess  discharge. 

^  Outlines  of  Psychology,  p.  311. 


Current  Biological  Theory  of  Adaptation.      191 

The  old  theory  turns  the  case  completely  over  and 
stands  it  on  its  head.^  We  reach,  in  fact,  from  this  con- 
sideration a  new  construction  in  which  our  organism  begins 
with  a  susceptibility  to  certain  organic  stimulations,  such 
as  food,  oxygen,  etc. ;  these  when  present  give  pleasure, 
the  pleasure  is,  physiologically  considered,  a  heightened 
vitality  in  the  central  nuclear  processes ;  this  heightened, 
central  vitality  issues  in  a  motor  excess  discharge  ;  from  the 
resulting  abundant  and  varied  movements  of  this  excess 
discharge  those  are  selected  which  bring  more  of  these 
vital  stimulations  again ;  and  these  finally  keep  up  the 
vitality  of  the  organism,  and  by  the  repeated  excess  move- 
ments, provide  for  constantly  progressive  adaptations. 

This  position,  it  is  plain,  does  not  rule  out  the  old  inter- 
pretation entirely  —  the  view  that  it  is  the  sense  of  acci- 
dentally adapted  movements  which  gives  pleasure.  For  in 
saying  that  it  is  the  stimulus  or  sense  process  which  gives 
pleasure,  according  as  it  is  vitally  beneficial  or  not,  I  do 
not  rule  out  any  kind  of  stimulus  or  sense  process.  Mus- 
cular sensation  —  the  sense  process  of  accomplished  move- 
ment—  takes  its  place  as  one  such  process  among  others, 
and  a  very  important  one.  In  as  far  as  the  exercise  of 
muscle  in  high  organisms,  or  the  mere  fact  of  contrac- 
tility itself  in  the  lower,  is  vitally  good,  in  so  far  it  also 
gives  pleasure,  and  this  pleasure  serves  to  issue  in  excess 
discharge  to  the  same  regions  again.  But  this  is  a  very 
different  view  from  that  which  says  that  the  excess  move- 
ments corresponding  to  pleasure  all  follow  from  accidental 
movements  which  are  lucky. 

The  Spencer-Bain  view  seems  then  to  say  that  one 
kind  of  sense  process,  that  which  reports  movements,  and 

^  Cf.  Spencer,  loc.  ciL,  I.,  ]>,  545. 


192  The   Theory  of  Development. 

movements  only  of  a  particular  kind  —  those  which  happen 
to  be  adaptive  by  chance  —  that  this  one  kind  of  sense 
process  gives  pleasure,  while  all  others  do  not.  But  why 
should  this  be  ?  All  processes  of  stimulation  going  into 
the  organic  centres  ought  to  follow  the  same  law.  If  one 
kind,  in  as  far  as  it  serves  to  heighten  vitality,  for  that  reason 
brings  up  the  energies  of  the  reacting  centre  to  the  pitch 
of  a  *  heightened  nervous  discharge,'  why  should  not  any 
other  stimulating  process  which  serves  to  heighten  vitality 
do  the  same  thing }  And  when  we  come  to  press  the 
case  more  closely  and  ask  why  it  is  that  only  one  class  of 
movements — a  logical  class  merely,  those  which  happen 
to  be  adaptive  —  do  in  reality  so  act,  the  only  practical 
criterion  is  after  all,  on  this  theory,  just  that  which  I 
am  urging,  i.e.,  that  those  movements  only  are  adaptive 
which  secure  a  new  element  of  sense  process,  such  as 
light,  chemical  action,  food  stimulus,  etc.,  in  addition  to 
the  ordinary  advantage  of  movement  itself  which  all  move- 
ments, qua  movements,  have  in  common. 

So  far,  I  have  spoken  of  pleasure,  but  the  same  holds, 
verbis  mutatis,  of  pain.  Let  us  ask  this  question  :  Where 
in  the  entire  series  of  events  constituting  a  reaction  accom- 
panied by  pain  —  stimulus,  central  process,  movement 
—  does  the  pain  come  in,  before  or  after  the  first  adapted 
movement,  i.e.,  the  movement  that  has  an  inhibiting  influ- 
ence somehow  upon  its  own  further  performance  1  The 
whole  phraseology  of  Spencer  and  Bain  would  serve  to 
make  us  think  that  it  came  in  only  after  a  movcvient  so  tm- 
hicky  as  to  be  ill-adapted,  the  pain  being  part  of  the  effect 
of  the  movement,  so  that,  by  the  memory  of  the  pain  thus 
got,  the  movement  is  in  future  inhibited.  The  pain  got 
from  the  movement  serves  in  memory  to  warn  us  not  to 


Cttrrciit  Biological  Theory  of  Adapfafiou.      193 

repeat  tJic  rdovcviejit}  But  here  I  take  issue  blankly,  con- 
tending that  it  comes  in  by  and  in  the  stlninlus  and  before 
its  discharge  in  movement,  warning  us  not  to  move  so  as  to 
repeat  that  stivnihis.  It  is  by  this  '  warning,'  —  which  is 
in  organic  terms  an  actual  lowering  of  vitality  and  conse- 
quent dampening  of  movement,  or  production  of  contrary 
movements,  —  by  this  the  organism  tends  to  avoid  the 
repetition  of  this  stimulation. 

Let  us  take  for  scrutiny  the  customary  illustration  — 
the  one  which  James  uses,  for  example,  in  explaining  the 
*  Meynert  scheme '  of  nervous  action.  A  child  thrusts 
his  finger  in  a  candle-flame,  and  is  burned :  he  thrusts  no 
more,  but  shrinks.  Here  the  doctrine  of  Spencer,  Bain, 
and  many  others,  seems  to  make  the  function  of  the  pain 
the  inhibition  of  the  thrusting  movement,  as  itself  unde- 
sirable. But  surely  the  case  is  very  different.  Is  this 
movement  in  itself  undesirable }  Is  it  not  undesirable 
ojdy  under  these  or  similar  circiunstances  ?  The  inhibiting 
effect  and  the  pain  are  brought  about  by  the  burn,  and 
the  recurrence  of  that  -—  that  is  the  thing  to  be  pre- 
vented. The  thrusting  movement  is  a  mere  incident. 
Suppose  the  candle  is  brought  up  against  the  child  in- 
stead of  the  reverse  :  it  then  shrinks  just  the  same.  But 
in  this  case  there  has  been  no  forward  movement  giving 
a  pain,  by  the  memory  of  which,  on  the  theory  in  ques- 
tion, the   shrinkage    or  stoppage   of   thrusting  is  caused. 

1  In  support  of  this  see  Spencer,  Prin.  of  Psych.,  Vol.  I.,  §§  227  f.,  §  232, 
§  237.  Bain's  view  is  seen  in  the  quotation  given  above.  Dr.  Ward  seems  to 
be  clear  of  this  criticism,  as  regards  the  function  of  the  pain-process,  as  actu- 
ally issuing  in  movements  which  secure  pleasure  or  bring  less  pain.  I  can  get 
no  consistent  conception,  however,  from  Ward,  since  he  implicates  attention 
even  when,  by  express  claim,  he  is  discussing  '  only  the  original  evolution.'  — 
Eiicycl.  Brit.,  Art.  '  Psychology,'  p.  73. 


194  T^^^^   Theoiy  of  Developme^it. 

No  doubt  the  child  has  a  habit  of  shrinking  from  pain- 
causing  things  ;  but  what  I  claim  is  just  this,  that  it  is 
pain-causing  tilings,  not  painful  feeling  movements,  which 
it  has  acquired  this  habit  in  reference  to. 

So  far  therefore,  let  us  bear  clearly  in  mind,  our  out- 
come is  this :  we  accept  from  the  Spencer-Bain  theory  the 
fact  of  adaptation  by  selection  from  excessive  movements, 
and  also  the  view  that  the  forerunner  or  cause  of  these 
excessive  movements  is  a  central  process  which  is  the 
organic  analogue  of  pleasure;^  but  we  raise  an  objection 
to  that  theory  which  seems  to  us  insuperable:  The  objec- 
tion that  it  makes  this  pleasure,  and  through  it  all  adapta- 
tion, result  from  one  kind  of  sense-stimulus,  that  of  the 
organism's  own  contraction,  and  not  from  others,  with  no 
ground  whatever  for  this  discrimination  against  the  ordi- 
nary stimulations  of  the  environment,  such  as  light,  heat, 
oxygen,  food-supply,  etc.,  which  are  most  vitally  necessary 
for  all  growth,  from  the  first. 

To  obviate  this  objection  we  must  hold  that  all  stimula- 
tions which  heighten  vitality  give  the  organic  basis  of 
pleasure  and  by  this  issue  in  excessive  movements.  This 
seems  natural,  easy,  and  in  fact  inevitable.  This  is  what 
my  theory  does.  It  says  :  given  any  reason  for  a  better 
central  organic  state  of  things,  this  better  state  of  things 
shows  itself,  by  the  law  of  dynamogenesis,  in  the  greater 
ease,  facility,  and  variety  of  movements,  which  facilitate 
the  adjustments  and  so  the  adaptations  of  the  organism. 

This  is  the  first  innovation  which  the  theory  which  I 
have  sketched  above  proposes.  While  securing  the  better 
basis  for  adaptation  generally,  however,  it  does  not  inter- 

1  Omitting  the  negative  or  pain  side,  which,  apart  from  details,  proceeds  in 
a  parallel  way. 


C^irrcnt  Biological  Theory  of  Adaptation.      195 

fere  with  the  function  of  pleasure  which  Bain  desiderates 
—  i.e.,  "  some  force  that  clenches  and  confirms,  some  suc- 
cessful chance  coincidence"^  [of  movement].  For  as  I 
have  said,  the  successful  chance  coincidence  would  still 
give  pleasure  and  the  same  association  would  hold  between 
this  pleasure  and  the  particular  movement  which  secured  it. 
And  under  regular  conditions  of  stimulation  this  associa- 
tion would  suffice  to  draft  off  the  increased  energy  of  the 
pleasure  process  into  the  channels  of  the  movement  which 
is  associated  with  the  pleasure ;  for  the  organic  basis  of 
an  association  must  be  some  kind  of  a  connective  pathway 
between  the  seats  of  the  things  which  are  associated. 

A  later  utterance  of  Bain's  comes  nearer,  as  far  as  I  am 
sure  that  I  understand  it,  to  the  recognition  of  my  view 
of  the  general  value  of  pleasure  and  pain  in  the  theory  of 
organic  accommodation.  He  says  in  his  last  edition  :  ^ 
"The  law  that  a  movement  bringing  pain  tends  to  be 
arrested,  and  a  movement  bringing  pleasure  to  be  pro- 
moted, is  with  some  plausibility  referred  to  a  general  prin- 
ciple of  nervous  action,  whereby,  seeing  that  pleasure  is 
in  so  many  cases  associated  with  increase,  and  pain  with 
diminution,  of  vital  energy,  there  should  grow  out  of  this 
circumstance  a  disposition  of  pleasure  to  feed,  and  of  pain 
to  sap  its  own  producing  energy  [by  an  adaptation  of 
movements  by  which  the  stimulation  giving  pleasure  is 
retained,  on  one  hand,  and  that  giving  pain  broken  with, 
on  the  other  hand].  There  is  an  undoubted  consistency 
between  the  two  sides  of  our  being  on  this  hypothesis  " 
[of  what  I  have  called  an  'imitative  '  or  'circular  activity ']. 
...     **  The  hypothesis  in  question  demands  for  its  ade- 

^  See  the  quotation  from  Bain  above. 

2  Bain,  Senses  and  Intellect^  4th  ed.,  pp.  328  f. 


196  The    Theory  of  Dcvelop7nent. 

quacy  a  far-reaching,  although  not  incredible  or  impossible, 
assumption  —  viz.,  that  the  tendency  of  pleasure,  through 
the  medium  of  its  physical  accompaniments,  to  heighten 
for  the  moment  the  activities  of  the  framework  in  general, 
somehow  finds  a  way  to  concentrate  upon  the  specific  move- 
ment adapted  to  the  precise  case  \i.e.,  adapted  to  bring  the 
organism  into  continued  relation  to  the  pleasure-giving 
stimulus].  This  is  a  very  large  demand  in  itself  and  would 
seem  to  need  a  large  number  of  chance  experiments  [or  a 
congenital  variation  producing  a  bifurcate  division  of  move- 
ments into  'expanding'  and  'contracting'  respectively]  be- 
fore the  lucky  coincidence  is  reached.  The  hypothesis  is 
by  no  means  impossible  ...  its  natural  place  is  under 
the  hypothesis  of  Evolution,  where  it  is  an  important,  if 
not  indispensable,  item."  ^ 

We  now  find  ourselves  introduced  to  another  class  of 
facts,  which,  when  interpreted,  lead  us  to  another  funda- 
mental innovation  in  the  theory  of  adaptation. 

It  is  evident  that  we  have  been  dealing  with  the  ques- 
tion of  ontogenetic  adaptation  so  far,  the  question  as  to 
how  the  indi\  idual  organism  manages  to  get  new  adapta- 
tions. Later  on  I  shall  ask  how  the  fact  of  heredity  can 
secure  the  preservation  for  the  species  of  the  adaptations 
secured  by  the  individual.  But  when  we  come  to  view 
the  general  fact  of  race  adaptation  as  a  whole,  the  ques- 

1  I  think  it  well  to  say  that  Professor  Bain  in  a  private  letter  wrote  me  that 
he  was  taking  account  of  my  article  on  'Imitation'  in  Mind  (January,  1894). 
As  he  makes  no  reference,  however,  to  my  paper  in  his  book,  1  may  be  wrong 
in  thinking  this  to  be  a  passage  in  which  ho  had  my  article  in  view.  I  may 
even  be  wrong  in  thinking  that  the  'hypothesis'  he  speaks  of  is  capable  of 
being  interpreted  in  the  way  I  have  in  the  additions  made  by  me  in  brackets 
in  the  text.  In  that  case,  the  quotation  may  be  read  simply  as  a  further 
exposition  of  my  own  views  put  largely  in  Professor  Bain's  words. 


Citrrcnt  Biological  Theory  of  Adaptation.      197 

tion  which  we  have  just  been  discussing  takes  on  a  further 
interest. 

It  has  been  needful  to  assume  that  in  the  simplest 
organic  forms  which  have  contractility,  and  which  are 
able  to  adapt  themselves  by  their  movements  to  their 
environment — that  in  such  forms  the  analogue  of  pleasure 
is  a  central  excess  process  which  discharges  itself  in 
movement.  The  question  for  phylogenesis,  then,  which 
comes  upon  us  is  this :  how  did  this  condition  of  things 
arise,  and  what  form  must  we  hold  these  excess  move- 
ments to  take .? 

This  question  Mr.  Bain  simply  begs.  His  principle  of 
'  spontaneity '  is  his  starting-point ;  and  he  does  not  even 
see,  as  I  have  said  above,  that  spontaneity  must  itself 
be  construed  in  terms  of  some  form  of  process  which 
accounts  for  an  organism's  expenditures  of  energy  in  terms 
of  such  stimulations  as  its  food-processes,  etc.  Hoffding 
says  in  reference  to  the  fact  of  spontaneity  :  ^  "  The  inter- 
nal changes,  which  set  free  potential  energy,  must,  in  their 
turn,  depend  on  the  function  of  nourishment.  The  spon- 
taneous movement  of  living  creatures  is  possible  only 
because  life  itself  is  an  uninterrupted  process  of  taking  in 
and  using  up  certain  constituents.  Absolute  spontaneity 
would  be  a  consumption  of  one's  own  fat."  It  is  evident 
that  Bain  never  brings  the  genetic  point  of  view  into  his 
theories,  except  by  the  merest  attempts  at  grafting  the 
evolution  idea  upon  the  trunk  of  his  analysis  of  the  actions 
of  developed  organisms. 

Mr.  Spencer,  on  the  contrary,  does  attempt  to  account 
for  the  rise  of  the  heightened  nervous  process  in  indi- 
viduals.    He  considers  it  a  concentration  of  the  energies 

1  OutliJies  of  Psychology,  p.  309, 


198  The   Theory  of  Developrnent. 

of  reaction  into  particular  pathways ;  and  so,  indeed,  it 
must  be.  But  to  him,  also,  it  is  an  ontogenetic  acquire- 
ment. It  follows  upon  the  first  lucky  adaptive  movement, 
as  we  have  seen  above. 

This  account  we  now  see  to  be  inadequate,  since  it 
assumes,  as  I  have  shown  at  length,  that  when  certain 
stimulations  are  present  —  stimulations  covered  by  the 
vague  word  '  adjustments,'  which  the  lucky  movement 
happens  to  strike  —  these  stimulations  serve  by  their 
action  to  heighten  the  central  processes.  So  the  whole 
question  remains  quite  unanswered  as  to  why  any  stimula- 
tions do  thus  heighten  the  central  processes,  and  so  give 
an  excess  discharge  in  movement.  Of  course,  the  only 
answer  is  that  those  processes  of  stimulation  do  this  to 
which  the  organism  is  already  accommodated  —  those 
under  the  action  of  which  it  has  come  to  be  what  it  is  — 
its  food-supply,  oxygen,  chemical  agents,  gravity,  contacts, 
etc.,  etc. 

The  general  fact  of  adaptation  by  chance  adjustments 
occurring  among  excessive  diffused  movements  is,  of 
course,  true  —  that  I  have  exemplified  above  in  my  theory 
of  the  rise  of  handwriting.^  What  is  not  accounted  for 
on  the  current  theory  is  just  the  spontaneous  or  excessive 
movements,  from  which  the  selection  is  made.  These,  in 
my  view,  are  due  to  the  heightened  central  processes 
excited  by  vitally  appropriate  stimuli.  This  seems  so  ele- 
mentary and  simple  that  it  would  not  be  worth  while  to 
speak  further  of  it  were  it  not  for  another  fact,  to  which  I 
may  now  revert. 

Biologists  find  among  very  first  adaptations  of  the  organ- 
isms, the  earliest  in  the  phylogenetic  series  —  in  the  mi- 
1  Chap,  v.,  §  2. 


Current  Biological  Theory  of  Adaptation.     199 

nutest  bacteria,  the  most  formless  protozoa,  the  unicellular 
creatures  of  a  day ;  in  plants,  in  all  life  —  a  certain  fun- 
damental difference  of  movements.  All  organisms  behave 
in  two  great  and  opposite  ways  toward  stimulations;  they 
approach  them,  or  they  recede  from  them.  Creatures 
which  move  as  a  whole  move  toward  some  kinds  of  stimu- 
lations, and  recede  from  others.  Creatures  which  are 
fixed  in  their  habitat  expand  toward  certain  stimulations, 
and  contract  away  from  others.  It  is  very  evident  that 
if  this  be  true,  the  very  uniformity  of  the  relation  entitles 
it  to  a  place  in  any  theory  of  development.  And  the 
question  at  once  arises :  why  is  it  that  we  find  these  two 
well-marked  differences  in  behaviour  in  each  organism, 
whatever  its  type  and  place  in  the  scale  of  animate 
nature .''  ^ 

Now  if  we  assume  this  to  be  a  fact  in  nature  —  I  devote 
an  entire  chapter  further  on  to  the  consideration  of  the 
facts,  under  the  phrase  '  Organic  Imitation  ' — that  an 
organism  tends  to  approach,  move,  strain,  toward  cer- 
tain stimulations,  and  away  from  others,  it  becomes  easy 
to  connect  the  fact  with  our  former  account  of  develop- 
ment, and  to  hold  that  the  stimulations  which  the  organ- 
ism tends  toward  are  those  which  heighten  its  vitality, 
which  give  it  pleasure,  and  those  from  which  it  draws  back 
are  those  whose  effect  upon  it  is  the  contrary  —  the  damag- 
ing, the  painful  ones.  This  is  on  the  surface  the  most 
natural  thing  in  the  world  for  nature  to  do — to  endow  her 
creatures  with  a  great  power  of  self-preservation  and  self- 

1  "Coextensive  with  the  phenomena  of  excitability  —  that  is  to  say,  with 
the  phenomena  of  Hfe  —  we  find  this  function  of  selective  discrimination  — 
this  power  of  discriminating  among  stimuli  and  responding  to  those  which 
are  the  stimuli  to  which  responses  are  appropriate."  —  Romanes,  Mental 
Evolution  in  Anitnals,  p.  51. 


200  The   Theory  of  Development. 

improvement.  An  organism  does  not  have  to  wait  for  a 
pleasure  to  come  along,  but  after  it  has  once  had  it,  it  can 
go  out  after  it ;  nor  to  remain  exposed  to  a  pain,  but  after 
once  experiencing  it,  it  can  retire  with  discretion. 

This  follows  in  such  simple  order  from  what  we  have 
found  to  be  the  method  of  adaptation  —  in  each  case  by  a 
movement  whose  adjustment  consists  just  in  its  appro- 
priateness to  secure  a  good  stimulation  —  that  the  facts  of 
biology  which  show  this  first  contrast  in  movements  are 
only  what  we  would  expect.  And  they  tend  in  so  far  also 
to  confirm  the  earlier  view  as  to  the  method. 

Coming  to  interpret  this  new  result,  therefore,  we  see 
that  our  early  random,  spontaneous,  movements  are  not 
random  or  spontaneous  at  all.  The  ontogenetic  growth 
of  the  individual  at  any  race  stage  starts  with  this  fun- 
damental adjustment  of  movements  to  the  stimulations 
under  which  the  phylogenetic  development  has  so  far  pro- 
gressed. And  it  is  only  a  statement  of  the  law  of  phylo- 
genetic development  to  say  that  this  antithesis  of  outward 
movements,  expansions,  on  one  hand,  and  withdrawing 
movements,  contractions,  on  the  other,  is  due  to  natural 
selection  working  among  organisms ;  the  first  application 
of  natural  selection  spoken  of  above  in  my  introductory 
sketch  of  the  theory  of  development.^ 

So  when  we  come  to  consider  phylogeny  and  ontogeny 


1  I  have  the  authority  of  Mr.  Spencer  for  making  the  abihty  to  move  toward 
or  away  from  an  object  a  sufficient  cue  to  the  operation  of  natural  selection, 
i.e.,  in  the  development  of  the  bilateral  nervous  system  and  the  system  of 
antagonistic  muscles  (^Loc.  cit.,  I.,  §  233).  But  he  entirely  fails  to  see  that  the 
same  thing  is  done  by  the  minute  creatures  which  swarm  to  red  light  and 
away  from  blue  light,  although  they  have  no  nervous  or  muscular  systems  at  all. 
Dr.  Ward  also  appeals  to  natural  selection  in  discussing  this  subject  as  follows  : 
"  At  first  when  only  random  movements  ensue,  we  may  fairly  suppose  both 


Cuj^rcnl  Biological  Theory  of  Adaptation. 


20I 


together  we  find  that  if  by  an  organism  we  mean  a  thing 
merely  of  contractility  or  irritability,  whose  round  of  move- 
ments is  kept  up  by  some  kind  of  nutritive  process  sup- 
plied by  the  environment  —  absorption,  chemical  action  of 
atmospheric  oxygen,  etc.  —  and  whose  existence  is  threat- 
ened by  dangers  of  contact  and  what  not,  the  first  thing 
to  do  is  to  secure  a  regular  supply  to  the  nutritive  pro- 
cesses, and  to  avoid  these  contacts.  But  the  organism  can 
do  nothing  but  move,  as  a  whole  or  in  some  of  its  parts. 
So  then  if  one  of  such  creatures  is  to  be  fitter  than  another 
to  survive,  it  must  be  the  creature  which  by  its  movements 
secures  more  nutritive  processes  and  avoids  more  danger- 
ous contacts.  But  movements  toward  the  source  of  stim- 
ulation keep  hold  on  the  stimulation,  and  movements  away 
from  contacts  break  the  contacts,  that  is  all.  Nature  se- 
lects these  organisms  ;  how  could  she  do  otherwise  } 

This,  too,  is  consonant  with  all  that  we  know  of  growth. 
Increased  vitality  tends  to  enlargement,  range  of  move- 
ment, activity,  while  lessened  vitality  and  organic  decay 
tend  to  the  opposite  series  of  effects,  shrinking,  contraction 
of  range,  torpidity. 

We  only  have  to  suppose,  then,  that  the  nutritive  growth 
processes  are  by  natural  selection  drained  off  in  organic 
expansions,  to  get  the  division  in  movements  which  repre- 
sents this   earliest  bifurcate  adaptation.     Then   inside  of 

that  the  chance  of  at  once  making  a  happy  hit  would  be  small  and  that  the 
number  of  chances  would  also  be  small.  Under  such  circumstances  natural 
selection  would  have  to  do  almost  everything  and  sul)jective  selection  almost 
nothing.  So  far  as  natural  selection  worked  we  should  have,  not  the  indi- 
vidual subject  making  a  series  of  tries  and  perfecting  itself  by  practice,  but 
we  should  have  those  individuals  whose  stuff  and  structure  happened  to  vary 
for  the  better,  surviving,  increasing,  and  displacing  the  rest."  —  EncycL  Brit., 
Art.  '  Psychology,'  p.  73. 


^02  The   Theory  of  Development. 

this  group  of  expansive  movements  —  'spontaneities'  or 
'heightened  discharges'  —  it  becomes  the  sphere  of  onto- 
genetic growth  to  secure  the  further  refinements  of  adjust- 
ment which  the  phenomena  of  'excess'  —  now  identified 
both  with  pleasurable  experience  in  consciousness  and  with 
motor  discharges  giving  out-reaching  movements  —  enables 
the  organism  to  secure. 

Finally,  we  found  the  Spencer-Bain  theory  to  make  one 
other  presupposition.  It  requires  a  relatively  constant, 
unchanging  environment,  in  order  to  give  the  repetitions  of 
stimulation  which  development  requires.  The  organism  is 
supposed  to  be  battered,  stormed,  by  repeated  stimulations 
of  the  same  general  kinds.  In  this,  the  purely  biological 
theories  of  development  concur ;  by  which  I  mean  those 
theories  which  do  not  call  in  the  pleasure-pain  process 
at  all,  but  rely  simply  upon  the  repetition  of  stimulations 
and  reactions,  and  the  resulting  compounding  of  processes 
which  these  repetitions  are  supposed  to  give. 

It  is  now  evident  that  my  theory  renders  the  organism 
much  less  dependent  upon  such  regularity  and  constancy 
in  the  environment.  Creatures  which  have,  in  their  own 
method  of  reaction,  a  way  of  reaching  after  the  stimula- 
tions which  they  need  —  a  way  of  retaining  contact  with 
the  source  of  supply,  say  of  food,  or  oxygen,  or  sunlight,  or 
heat,  or  of  increasing  their  forces  by  actually  moving 
toward  it,  these  creatures,  can,  in  a  measure,  find  or  make 
for  themselves  the  regularities  which  the  environment  may 
not  guarantee.^     So,  also,  can  they  by  their  natural  capac- 

1  Think,  for  example,  the  difference  it  makes  in  the  possible  time  required 
for  the  evolution  of  sense  organs  such  as  the  eye,  if  we  allow  the  organism 
a  form  of  reaction  which  moves  it  toward  the  source  of  the  light  stimul- 
ation.    Cf.  Spencer's  doctrine  on  this  point.  Psychology,  I,,  §§  231  f. 


Current  Biological  Theory  of  Adaptation.     203 

ity  of  withdrawing  from  what  is  pain-giving,  avoid  and 
escape  harmful  things  to  which  they  are,  perchance,  con- 
stantly exposed.  It  is  possible  that  the  faculty  of  local 
movement,  locomotion,  possessed  by  animals,  in  contrast 
with  plants,  is  simply  a  further  emphasis  of  this  very 
useful  distinction  in  reactions.  This  follows,  indeed, 
of  necessity,  when  we  come  to  see  below,  that  the  sys- 
tem of  'antagonistic'  muscles  is  a  product  of  just  this 
original  contrast  of  reaching  and  withdrawing  move- 
ments. 

When,  further,  we  come  to  mental  development  proper, 
in  later  chapters  of  this  work,  we  will  see  that  this  is 
exactly  the  method  of  that  highest  of  all  functions  of 
accommodation,  adaptation  by  volition.  When  we  will  to 
escape  that  which  is  brought  upon  us  by  the  regular  laws 
of  nature,  we  simply  adopt  means  of  withdrawal  from  it 
by  anticipation  ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  we  secure  those 
pleasant  and  beneficial  experiences  which  the  environment 
of  our  lives  would  not,  in  itself  perhaps,  have  brought  us, 
by  willing  to  go  out  and  find  them. 

It  is  evident  from  what  has  now  been  said,  that  the 
fundamental  difference  between  my  theory  and  that  cur- 
rent among  psychologists,  concerns  the  first  07'ganic  adap- 
tation. On  my  theory,  the  first  adaptation  \s  phylogenetic  ; 
i.e.,  it  is  a  variation.  By  the  operation  of  natural  selection 
among  organisms,  those  survive  which  respond  by  expan- 
sion to  certain  stimulations  of  food,  oxygen,  etc.,  and  by 
contraction  to  other  certain  stimulations  ;  this  expansion 
gives,  by  reason  of  the  new  stimulations  which  it  brings 
within  range,  a  heightened  central  process  which  is  the 
organic  basis  of  the  hedonic  consciousness ;  and  this  issues 
in  the  varied  excess  movements  from  which  the  ontoge- 


204  The   Theory  of  Development. 

netic  adaptations  of  the  individual  organism  are  selected 
by  association,  as  fitted  in  turn  to  perpetuate  the  stimula- 
tions which  give  pleasure,  and  so  again  to  arouse  the 
excess  process,  and  so  on. 

The  current  Spencer-Bain  theory,  on  the  contrary,  holds, 
as  I  understand  it,  that  the  first  adaptation  is  07itoge7ietic ; 
i.e.,  it  is  due  to  accidental  adjustments  occurring  among 
diffused  or  spontaneous  movements  of  a  single  organism, 
these  adjustments  giving  a  heightened  central  process 
which  is  the  organic  basis  of  the  hedonic  consciousness, 
and  which  issues  again  in  excess  movements  from  which 
again  further  adjustments  are  selected  by  chance ;  these 
adjustments  all  being  made  permanent  by  the  association 
between  the  idea  of  the  movements  thus  giving  pleasure, 
and  the  memories  of  the  pleasure  which  they  give. 

With  these  criticisms,  the  outline  of  the  theory  of 
development  stands  out  clearly  enough,  I  think.  I  shall 
now  go  on  to  show  briefly  that  the  theory  would  not  be 
affected  by  the  truth  or  falsity  of  either  of  the  opposed 
views  of  heredity  now  so  bitterly  opposed  to  each  other 
in  biological  circles. 

§  3.    Development  and  Heredity. 

No  theory  of  development  is  complete,  in  general  opin- 
ion, which  does  not  account  for  the  transmission  in  some 
way,  from  one  generation  to  another,  of  the  gains  of  the 
earlier  generations,  turning  individual  gains  into  race 
gains.  I  wish,  therefore,  to  inquire  briefly  what  treat- 
ment the  view  of  development  held  above  has  a  right 
to  expect  from  the  two  current  theories  of  heredity. 

The  neo-Darwinians  hold  that  natural  selection,  operat- 


Development  and  Heredity,  205 

ing  upon  congenital  variations,  is  adequate  to  explain  all 
progressive  race  gains.  This  theory,  therefore,  is  able  to 
dispense  with  the  ontogenetic  acquirements  of  the  par- 
ticular organism.  It  accordingly  denies  that  what  an 
individual  experiences  in  his  lifetime,  the  gains  he  makes 
in  his  adaptations  to  his  surroundings,  can  be  transmitted 
to  his  sons. 

This  theory,  it  is  evident,  can  be  held  on  the  view  of 
development  sketched  above.  For,  granting  the  onto- 
genetic progress  required  by  the  Spencer-Bain  theory  and 
adopted  in  my  own,  —  the  learning  of  new  movements  in 
the  way  which  I  have  called  'organic  selection,'  —  yet  the 
ability  to  do  it  may  be  a  congenital  variation.  Indeed,  I 
have  made  the  excess  process  itself,  which  gives  the 
movements  from  which  *  organic  selection '  selects  the 
fittest,  together  with  the  great  antithesis  of  expansions 
and  contractions  with  pleasure  and  pain,  just  such  vari- 
ations seized  upon  by  natural  selection.  And  all  the  later 
acquirements  of  individual  organisms  may  likewise  be  con- 
sidered only  the  evidence  of  additional  variations  from 
these  earlier  variations.  So  it  is  only  necessary  to  hold 
to  a  view  by  which  variations  are  cumulative  to  secure 
the  same  results  by  natural  selection  as  would  have  been 
secured  by  the  inheritance  of  acquired  characters  from 
father  to  son.  Mr.  Spencer  and  others  seem  to  me  to  be 
quite  wide  of  the  mark  in  saying  that  the  only  alternative 
to  the  inheritance  of  acquired  characters  is  a  doctrine  of 
*  special  creation.'  The  life  history  of  the  mammal  embryo 
shows  us,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  as  we  have  already  seen,  a 
single  creature  going  through  many  of  the  variations  of 
the  race  series,  without  giving  us  the  actual  life-history  of 
the  beings  which  in  their  lives  represented  any  single  one 


2o6  The   Theory  of  Developme^tt. 

of  these  stages.  As  Balfour  says :  ^  "  Each  organism  re- 
produces the  variations  inherited  from  all  its  ancestors,  at 
successive  stages  in  its  individual  ontogeny  which  corre- 
spond with  those  at  which  the  variations  appeared  in  its 
ancestors."  The  embryological  record  emphasizes  the  vari- 
ations, not  the  means  by  which  they  were  produced,  nor 
their  detailed  organic  outcome  in  particular  generations.^ 

The  problem  which  is  left  on  the  hands  of  the  neo- 
Darwinian,  therefore,  is  to  construct  a  theory  of  variations. 
The  '  why,'  the  '  how  much,'  the  '  in  what  direction,'  of  vari- 
ation —  these  questions  he  must  answer.  And,  of  course, 
the  burden  of  proof  lies  on  him  to  show  that  his  adversa- 
ries have  not  correctly  answered  the  question  of  '  the  how  ' 
of  variation  by  their  hypothesis  of  the  transmission  of 
acquired  characters. 

It  is  not  as  generally  seen,  however,  that  the  only  way 
that  such  a  theorist  can  answer  these  questions  is  by  an 
actual  examination  of  existing  variations  both  as  to  the 
facts  of  their  existence  and  of  their  modes  of  develop- 
ment. He  must  recognize  all  the  processes  of  the  devel- 
opment of  the  individual  in  order  to  define  the  variation 
which  rendered  these  results  possible  in  the  life  of  the 
individual.  This  is  what  gives  value  to  the  Spencer-Bain 
theory,  considered  as  an  attempt  to  define  the  actual 
ontogenetic  process  of  adaptation.  On  the  basis  of  that 
theory  we  may  ask  the  question,  therefore :  how  can  or- 
ganic selection  —  individual  growth  in  adaptation  —  be  a 
fact.?     What  is  the  neurological  process   seen  in  it  and 


^  Comparative  Embryology,  p.  3. 

2  And  this  emphasis  is  made  more  emphatic,  possibly,  in  the  light  of  the 
'  discontinuous  variations '  recently  discussed  by  Bateson,  and  earlier  pointed 
out  by  Gallon  under  the  name  of  '  sports.' 


Developme7it  and  Heredity.  207 

what  kind  of  congenital  variations  does  the  presence  of 
this  process  presuppose  ? 

The  theory  of  individual  adaptation,  accordingly,  comes 
first  as  a  matter  both  of  fact  and  of  interpretation,  and 
should  be  treated  quite  apart  from  the  problem  of  hered- 
ity. We  are  justified  accordingly,  from  the  point  of  view 
of  the  neo-Darwinian  theory,  in  attempting  to  answer  it 
in  the  preceding  pages. 

The  same  is  true  also  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
neo-Lamarkian  theory  of  heredity,  as  is  evident ;  for  just 
such  examination  and  interpretation  of  the  facts  of  indi- 
vidual experience  and  development  supplies  on  this  theory 
the  very  means  and  method  of  interpreting  hereditary  race 
progress.  Granting  the  inheritance  of  acquired  characters, 
of  course  the  biologist  then  asks :  Well,  what  has  the  indi- 
vidual at  each  stage  been  able  to  acquire,  and  how  did  he 
acquire  it  .'*  This  is  what  we  have  been  attempting  to 
answer  above. 

It  is  being  gradually  recognized  by  biologists  that  the 
requirements  of  fact  are  about  equally  well  served  by 
either  theory,  which  means  that  facts  have  not  yet  re- 
futed either  theory.  Whatever  a  particular  creature  may 
be  endowed  with,  he  may  have  got  in  either  way  —  or  in 
both  together.  Instinct,  for  example,  may  be  held  to 
have  a  twofold  origin ;  it  may  have  arisen  in  some-  cases 
by  the  natural  selection  of  creatures  having  accidental 
reflex  adaptations,  and  in  other  cases  by  intelligent  adapta- 
tion. And  both  processes  can  be  construed  without  sup- 
posing the  inheritance  of  acquired  characters ;  for  the 
ability  to  make  intelligent  adaptation  may  be  considered 
as  itself  a  variation,  and  so  may  the  reflex  adaptations. 

I   should   say,  therefore,  that,  supposing  the   analogue 


2o8  The   Theory  of  Developmcfit. 

of  the  pleasiirc-pain  process  is  in  all  cases  the  actual 
evidence  and  accompaniment  of  the  excess  process  from 
whose  discharges  adaptations  of  movement  are  secured, 
then  either  of  two  further  views  may  be  held.  Either  on 
one  hand  the  pleasure-pain  process  is  a  variation  (and  with 
it,  the  actual  hedonic  consciousness),  the  environment  of 
the  individual  in  each  generation  simply  serving  to  give  it 
scope  for  special  adaptations ;  or  on  the  other  hand,  this 
process  itself  is  an  organic  selection,  a  thing  acquired  by 
the  individual  in  his  experience  and  then  transmitted  by 
inheritance  with  the  accretions  of  each  generation  simi- 
larly acquired.  But  in  either  case,  the  pleasure-pain  pro- 
cess is  the  same  and  performs  the  same  fuictions  ;  both  are 
exactly  what  the  facts  show  them  to  be.  And  the  hered- 
ity problem  may  be  left  to  one  side. 

In  the  foregoing  pages  I  have  seemed,  however,  to  find 
reason  for  saying  that  the  pleasure-pain  process,  with  its 
antithesis  of  outward  and  inward  movements,  was  due  to 
natural  selection,  that  is,  that  it  was  phylogenetic  in  its 
origin.  Further  considerations  may  now  be  adduced  quite 
apart  from  the  general  question  of  heredity.  We  are  in 
fact  brought  here  face  to  face  with  the  question  of  the 
origin  of  consciousness,  and  upon  this  I  shall  be  able  to 
express  only  very  hypothetical  opinions. 

§  4.    The  Origin  of  Coiiscionsness. 

The  foregoing  paragraphs  seem  to  give  us  some  indica- 
tions of  the  relation  of  consciousness  to  the  phenomena 
of  life.  We  have  found  it  necessary  to  hold  that  the 
physical  basis  of  hedonic  consciousness  —  the  fact  of 
heightened   central    vital    processes   issuing   in   expansive 


The  Origin  of  Consciousness.  209 

movements  —  is  a  variation  in  primitive  organisms  of 
phylogenetic  origin,  rather  than  an  acquisition  due  to 
adjustment  secured  in  the  life-history  of  particular  organ- 
ism.s.  The  original  bifurcation  of  movements,  as  out- 
reaching  and  retiring,  I  have  described  as  a  phylogenetic 
distinction  and  product;  a  variation  among  the  earliest 
contractile  forms.  Some  arose  by  variation  which  did 
discharge  their  increased  vitality  in  expansive  movements, 
and  by  the  advantage  of  it  lived  longer  and  propagated 
more. 

It  is  possible,  however,  to  hold  a  different  view ;  in 
fact,  we  have  found  the  ordinary  Spencer-Bain  theory  of 
adaptation  doing  so.  On  this  view  the  heightened  central 
process  is  an  adaptation  secured  in  the  lifetime  of  the 
creature.  On  this  view,  further,  it  is  necessary  to  suppose 
that  all  stimulations,  including  those  of  nutrition,  varied 
in  their  effects  upon  the  organism  from  enlargement,  ex- 
pansion, etc.,  in  some  instances,  to  diminution,  contraction, 
etc.,  in  other  instances,  in  the  same  organism.  Mr.  Spen- 
cer does  indeed  attempt  to  give  a  purely  mechanical 
deduction  of  the  association  between  withdrawing  move- 
ment and  pain,i  making  it  arise  in  the  *  experience '  of 
uniform  contractile  tissue.  In  that  case,  ontogenetic  adap- 
tation precedes  phylogenetic,  and  if  we  bring  in  conscious- 
ness at  all,  we  would  have  in  such  a  creature  an  association 
between  the  pleasure  of  the  success  of  certain  expansive 
movements  which  were  also  adaptive,  and  the  sense  of  the 
movements  themselves. 

This,  it  is  evident,  makes  consciousness  of  pleasure  and 
pain  arise  at  some  point  in  the  creature's  life;  just  where, 
we  have  no  clear  answer  from  Spencer.     But  if  we  say 

1  Spencer,  loc.  cii.,  I.,  §  227. 
P 


2IO  The   Theory  of  Development, 

that  uniform  contractile  tissue  did  not  have  consciousness 
before  the  heightened  process  which  indicates  pleasure, 
and  that  this  heightened  process  is  due  in  some  way  to 
accidental  adjustments  of  movement ;  then  consciousness 
must  have  arisen  by  means  of  these  adjustments. 

But  we  have  seen  that  adjustments  of  movement  can 
have  no  meaning  for  the  organism,  except  as  they  bring 
certain  vital  stimulations.  So  the  rise  of  consciousness 
after  all  would  seem  to  be  due  to  the  influence  of  these 
vital  stimulations.  And  when  we  come  to  ask  why  these 
vital  stimulations  are  vital,  why  they  are  necessary,  that  is, 
we  appeal  at  once  to  the  habits  —  the  very  constitution  of 
the  life  process  itself  —  all  of  which  must  have  come  to 
the  particular  organism  by  heredity.  So  consciousness 
becomes,  after  all,  in  its  actual  rise  a  phylogenetic  product. 

Looking  at  it  from  this  phylogenetic  point  of  view,  as 
a  variation,  we  find  difficulties  and  certain  advantages. 
Romanes,  it  will  be  remembered,  treats  the  fact  of  *  selec- 
tive contraction '  as  the  '  criterion  of  mind,'  the  indication 
of  the  presence  of  consciousness  ^ ;  and,  inasmuch  as  he 
also  finds  this  fact  of  selective  contraction  in  the  lowest 
known  living  creatures,  it  would  seem  in  his  view  to  be  due 
either  to  selection,  in  case  we  suppose  still  earlier  a  uni- 
form contractile  tissue,  or  as  a  part  of  the  *  general  mystery 
of  life,'  in  case  we  do  not. 

The  difficulty,  however,  which  he  sees  to  the  '  selection ' 
view,  he  states  in  this  way  :  "  The  difficulty  is  that  I  began 
by  showing  it  necessary  to  define  mind  as  the  power  of 
exercising  Choice  [selective  reaction],  and  then  proceeded 
to  define  the  latter  as  a  power  belonging  only  to  agents 
that  are  able  to  feel.  ...     It  seems  that  my  conception  of 

1  Mental  Evolution  in  Animals^  Chap.  I. 


The  Origin  of  Consciousness.  2 1 1 

what  constitutes  Choice  is  in  antagonism  with  my  view 
that  the  essential  element  of  Choice  is  found  to  occur 
among  organisms  which  cannot  properly  be  supposed  to 
feel.  This  .  .  .  contradiction  is  a  real  one,  though  I  hold 
it  to  be  unavoidable.  For  it  arises  from  the  fact  that 
neither  Feeling  nor  Choice  appears  upon  the  scene  of  life 
suddenly.  .  ,  .  There  are  two  ways  of  meeting  the  diffi- 
culty. One  is  to  draw  an  arbitrary  line,  and  the  other  is 
not  to  draw  any  line  at  all,  but  to  carry  the  terms  down 
through  the  whole  gradation  of  the  things  until  we  arrive 
at  the  terminal  or  root  principles.  By  the  time  that  we  do 
arrive  at  these  root  principles,  it  is  no  doubt  true  that  our 
terms  have  lost  all  their  original  meaning." 

The  difficulty  is,  in  short,  that  we  have  two  horns  of  a 
dilemma:  either  (i)  Consciousness  with  feeling  of  pleasure 
and  pain  are  co-extensive  with  life ;  in  which  case  they 
existed  before  the  selective  reactions  which  are  said  to  be 
the  criterion  of  consciousness.  For  —  to  put  this  alterna- 
tive in  terms  of  my  own  foregoing  explanations  —  the  same 
stimulations  of  nutrition,  etc.,  which  are  now  said  to  explain 
the  increase  of  the  central  processes,  upon  which  conscious- 
ness is  based,  must  have  been  vital  to  life  before  this  so- 
called  variation  arose.  Why  then  did  not  the  uniform  liv- 
ing protoplasm,  which  preceded  the  variation,  itself  have 
consciousness }  Or,  the  second  horn  of  the  dilemma,  (2), 
Consciousness  with  feeling  of  pleasure  and  pain  are  quite 
useless  appendages  to  the  theory  of  adaptation  and  are  in 
no  way  accounted  for;  since  the  variation  which  secures 
the  first  adaptation,  that  is,  the  selective  reactions  said  to 
be  the  criterion  of  mind,  are  simply  variations  in  processes 
of  nutrition,  etc.,  which  must  have  existed  in  earlier  living 
matter,  if  it  existed,  and  may  exist  in  much  higher  forms 


212  The   Theory  of  Development. 

of  living  matter,  in  which  we  have  no  evidence  of  such  a 
thing  as  feeling  of  pleasure  or  pain. 

Romanes  thinks  it  is  best  to  draw  no  line  at  all  between 
life  without  and  life  with  consciousness,  but  to  say  that  as 
we  descend  in  the  scale  terms  like  feeling,  which  imply 
consciousness,  are  gradually  eviscerated  of  their  meaning ; 
and  he  is  probably  right.  But  he  does  not  see  that  even 
then  there  are  two  remaining  alternatives.  We  may  say, 
to  state  one  of  the  alternatives  first,  that  life  existed 
before  selective  reaction;  in  which  case  —  holding  that 
mind  is  co-extensive  with  life  —  he  must  give  up  his 
criterion  of  mind.  This,  I  think,  he  does  substantially, 
adopting,  somewhat  hesitatingly  it  is  true,  the  Spencer- 
Bain  view  of  the  origin  of  adaptations  by  accidental 
movements  during  the  lifetime  of  early  creatures.  He 
says :  ^  *'  How  are  we  to  explain  the  fact  that  the  ana- 
tomical plan  of  a  nerve  centre  .  .  .  comes  to  be  that  which 
is  needed  to  direct  the  nervous  stimuli  into  the  channels 
required }  The  answer  to  this  question  we  found  to  con- 
sist in  the  property  which  is  shown  by  nervous  tissue  to 
grow  by  use  into  the  directions  which  are  required  for 
farther  use.  This  subject  is  as  yet  an  obscure  one,  espe- 
cially when  the  earliest  stages  of  such  adaptive  growth 
are  concerned,  but  in  a  general  way  we  can  understand  that 
hereditary  nsage,  combined  with  natural  selection  may  have 
been  alone  sufficient,  etc."  (italics  mine).  Furthermore, 
he  presents  an  argument  for  the  ontogenetic  view  of  the 
rise  of  selective  reactions  in  saying :  ^  *'  It  is  impossible 
that  heredity  can  have  provided  in  advance  for  innova- 
tions upon  or  alterations  of  its  own  machinery  during  the 

1  Loc.  cit.^  p.  60. 

2  Loc.  cit.,  p.  20  f,  quoting  from  his  own  work  on  Animal  Intelligence. 


The   Origin  of  Consciousness.  213 

lifetime  of  a  particular  individual."  The  inference  being 
that  if  such  innovations  cannot  be  provided  for  by  heredity 
(variation)  they  must  be  acquired  during  the  lifetime  of 
the  creatures.  This  argument  is  worthy  of  discussion  and 
is  taken  up  again  :  but  it  is  not  necessary  to  dwell  upon 
it  here,  inasmuch  as  it  does  not  conflict  with  the  possible 
truth  of  the  second  alternative  which  is  still  open. 

This  second  alternative  —  really  a  third  one  in  relation 
to  the  horns  of  the  original  dilemma  presented  to  the 
mind  of  Romanes  —  is  this:  we  may  say  that  life  began 
with  selective  reaction  as  part  of  its  original  endowment, 
and  with  consciousness  withal,  that  is,  with  feelings  of 
pleasure  and  pain. 

This  position  preserves  the  criterion  of  mind,  making 
it  also  the  criterion  of  life,  and  so  assumes  an  absolute 
phylogenetic  beginning  of  both  life  and  mind  in  one. 
This  seems  to  me  to  be  required  not  only  by  the  logic  of 
criteria  but  also  by  the  facts  of  life. 

In  what  sense  we  are  able  to  call  this  a  'variation' 
is,  of  course,  open  to  dispute.  It  is  certainly  a  variation 
in  nature  —  this  tremendous  thing,  life,  made  more  tre- 
mendous as  being  the  vehicle  of  mind.  But  is  it  not 
more  simple  than  the  other  horn  of  the  dilemma;  that 
which  requires  the  assumption,  first,  of  life  without  con- 
sciousness, and  then,  a  little  later  on,  the  farther  assump- 
tion of  consciousness  in  connection  with  life  t 

But  more  positive  advantages  come,  it  is  to  be  hoped, 
from  the  foregoing  considerations.  It  has  been  shown 
that  the  theory  of  biological  adaptation  cannot  dispense 
with  a  factor  which  is,  from  all  accounts,^ — taking  biologists 
like  Romanes  to  witness,  —  the  physiological  analogue  of 
pleasure  and  pain,  and  that  nowhere  can  a  beginning  be 


2  14  The   Theory  of  Developmcjit, 

found  for  this  in  the  life  series.  When  we  come  further 
to  see  that  all  stages  of  mental  accommodation  and 
development  can  be  construed  as  further  steps  in  such 
biological  adaptation  —  a  task  to  which  this  book  is  mainly 
devoted  —  it  would  require  some  temerity  of  dogmatism 
or  some  strong  evidence  to  the  contrary  to  lead  one  to 
throw  away  such  an  extension  of  the  principle  of  uni- 
formity in  nature.  And  yet,  with  the  two  great  excep- 
tions, Spencer  and  Romanes,  I  know  of  no  biologists 
approaching  the  first  rank,  who  have  attempted  to  bring 
the  phenomena  of  mental  development  —  the  class  of 
facts  most  open  to  scrutiny  and  most  important  every- 
where in  the  animal  series  —  and  those  of  organic  adap- 
tation, under  the  terms  of  a  single  concept. 

§  5.    Outcome:  Habit  and  Accomniodation. 

Returning  upon  our  path  we  are  now  able  to  see  that 
two  great  truths  stand  out  in  all  development ;  two  truths 
both  of  which  are  based  upon  the  general  fact  of  con- 
tractility or  reaction,  and  which,  therefore,  take  us  further 
upon  our  way. 

The  organism  tends  to  repeat  what  it  has  already 
done;  this  all  theories  of  development  agree  upon,  the 
biologists,  the  disciples  of  Spencer,  the  advocates  of  the 
association  theory  of  Bain,  the  psychologists.  The  fact 
of  repetition  is  admitted  to  be  the  corner-stone  of  all 
theories ;  and  all  theories  go  farther  in  naming  the  prin- 
ciple which  such  repetitions  illustrate,  the  law  of  Habit. 

The  formulation  of  the  principle  of  habit,  however, 
must  depend  somewhat  upon  the  sort  of  notion  we  enter- 
tain of  contractility,  of  the  way  which  the  organism  takes 


Outcome:    Habit  and  Acconnuodatiou.       215 

to  get  its  repetitions.  If  we  hold  that  habits  are  distinctly- 
due  to  the  repetition  of  motor  discharges,  —  that  is,  to  the 
second,  third,  fourth  performance  of  contractions,  as  the 
Spencer-Bain  theory  tells  us,  — then  no  habit  can  be  formed 
as  such,  or  can  be  begun  to  be  formed  until  after  a  first 
contraction  has  opened  the  way  for  the  passage  of  the 
contracting  energy  into  the  same  channels  of  discharge  a 
second,  third,  fourth  time.  The  formulation  of  the  prin- 
ciple of  habit  on  this  theory  takes  on  then  something  of 
this  form  —  its  usual  form  —  i.e.,  Habit  expresses  the  ten- 
dency of  an  organism  to  repeat  its  own  movements  again 
and  again. 

I  have  said  enough,  I  think,  already  to  show  what  criti- 
cism ought  to  be  passed  on  this  formulation.  It  means 
that  the  organism  starts  with  nothing  equivalent  to  habit, 
with  no  native  tendency  to  any  kind  of  movement,  with 
no  teleology  in  its  movements,  no  ulterior  organic  ends. 
It  further  gives  no  criterion  as  to  what  kind  of  move- 
ments it  is  desirable  the  organism  should  get  into  the 
habit  of  performing.  It  makes  the  movements  necessary 
to  the  creature's  life  on  a  par  precisely  with  all  other 
movements,  while  yet  admitting  that  it  is  only  by  appro- 
priate movements  that  the  organism  could  have  got  life 
processes  at  all.  It  gives  the  organism  no  preferences 
for  its  food,  its  oxygen,  the  stimulations  in  the  presence  of 
which  alone  life  itself  would  be  possible ;  for  such  prefer- 
ences would  have  to  show  themselves  as  organic  tenden- 
cies to  some  kind  of  differential  movements. 

Coming  to  supply  this  lack,  as  I  have  endeavoured  to  do 
in  the  preceding  pages,  we  find  it  necessary  to  consider  that 
the  repetition  of  movement  is  not  at  all  what  the  organism 
is  after,  nor  indeed  is  it  what  the  principle  of  habit  rests 


2i6  The   Theory  of  Development. 

upon.  It  is  not  true  that  all  movements  are  *  equal  before 
law  '  —  the  law  of  habit.  Movements  which  cause  pain  do 
not  tend  to  be  repeated.  They  are  exceptions  to  the  law 
of  habit,  as  that  is  usually  formulated.  Painful  move- 
ments are  inhibited,  they  tend  to  be  reversed,  squelched, 
utterly  blotted  out ;  how  can  this  be  explained  on  the  fore- 
going formula  for  habit .''  It  cannot  be  explained.  And 
yet  it  is  found  to  be  a  fact  in  the  lowest  living  creatures 
that  the  biologist  knows. 

So  just  as  in  starting  with  life  we  have  to  start  with 
some  process  characteristic  of  life,  —  say  nutrition  alone,  if 
you  please,  —  so  we  have  also  by  the  law  of  dynamogenesis 
to  start  with  tendencies  to  movements  which  are  the  mani- 
festations of  life,  and  are,  in  so  far,  special.  And  the 
object  of  these  movements  is  the  maintenance  of  life : 
which  is  only  another  expression,  as  we  have  found  reason 
to  believe,  for  the  maintenance  of  the  stimulations  neces- 
sary to  life.  So  we  reach  a  new  formulation  of  the 
principle  of  habit  by  which  it  reads  something  like  this : 
Habit  expresses  the  tendency  of  an  organism  to  keep  in 
touch,  by  means  of  movement,  with  beneficial  stimulations : 
or  if  we  summarize  under  a  single  word  the  character  of 
the  movements  toward  which  all  habits  of  the  organism 
tend,  we  may  say :  Habit  expresses  the  tendency  of  the 
organism  to  secure  ajid  to  retain  its  vital  stimzdations. 

On  this  view,  a  habit  begins  before  the  movement  which 
illustrates  it  actually  takes  place  ;  the  organism  is  endowed 
with  a  habit,  if  that  be  not  considered  a  contradiction.  Its 
life  process  involves  just  the  tendency  which  habit  goes 
on  to  confirm  and  to  extend.  The  process  of  habit,  having 
as  its  end  the  maintenance  of  a  condition  of  stimulation, 
is  set  in  train  by  the  initial  stimulus.     And  the  discharge 


Outcojue :    Habit  and  Accoj]imodation.      217 

of  it  in  the  path  which  again  '  hits  '  the  stimulus  is  the 
function  of  this  stimulus  rather  than  another,  and  reflects, 
exactly  and  alone,  the  fact  that  then  and  there  is  a  stimu- 
lus whose  influence  upon  the  vital  processes  is  good. 

Here  at  the  very  origin  of  the  things  of  life,  therefore, 
we  find  the  '  circular  process,'  what  I  am  going  on  in  the 
following  pages  to  call  the  '  imitation  '  process.  And  the 
law  of  habit  is  simply  a  generalization,  all  the  way  through 
the  facts  of  biology  and  psychology,  from  the  various  appli- 
cations of  this  principle. 

The  other  great  principle,  on  which  the  foregoing  discus- 
sions serve  to  throw  some  light,  is  that  of  Accommodation 
as  it  is  best  to  call  it  in  psychology,  adaptation  in  biology. 
Let  us  see  how  it  may  be  put  in  contrast  to  that  which  is 
called  habit. 

We  have  had  occasion  to  ask  in  detail  how  an  organism 
can  accommodate  itself,  and  have  already  discussed  various 
answers  in  equal  detail.  Our  outcome  may  be  briefly 
stated,  apart  from  the  consideration  of  habit,  somewhat  in 
this  way  :  An  organism  accommodates  itself,  or  learns  new 
adjustments,  simply  by  exercising  the  movements  which 
it  already  has,  its  habits,  in  a  heightened  or  excessive  way  ; 
the  accommodation  is  in  each  case  simply  the  result  and 
fruit  of  the  habit  itself  which  is  exercised. 

This  is  clear  when  we  remember  that  on  our  new  con- 
ception of  habit  every  act  prompted  by  habit  is  an  act  of 
attaining  a  beneficial  stimulation  or  experience  :  now  the 
result  of  every  attainment  of  a  beneficial  experience  is  to 
discharge  an  excessive  pleasure  wave  of  movement  from 
which  new  adjustments  are  selected  by  the  same  criterion; 
that  is,  by  the  enriched  stimulations  or  experiences  which 
they   in    turn    secure.       So    these    later    adjustments    are 


2i8  The  Theory  of  Development, 

accommodations.  Each  such  accommodation  is  reached 
simply  in  the  ordinary  routine  of  habit,  and  is  its  out- 
come. 

How  simple  this  view  is  in  the  whole  range  of  facts 
becomes  evident  in  the  notice  of  various  of  its  applications 
in  subsequent  chapters.  It  seems  to  allow  us  to  make 
nature  move  smoothly,  instead  of  being  compelled,  as 
we  are  so  often  compelled,  to  consider  a  new  thing, 
a  novelty  in  nature,  an  invention,  a  new  adaptation  of 
means  to  end  —  to  consider  each  of  these  as  involving  a 
great  wrench  of  nature  from  the  methods  of  her  usual 
working !  Let  us  say,  once  for  all,  that  every  new  thing 
is  an  adaptation,  and  every  adaptation  arises  right  out  of 
the  bosom  of  old  processes  and  is  filled  with  old  matter. 
Does  not  the  one  kind  of  '  circular '  reaction  in  which,  as 
we  now  see,  habit  and  accommodation  meet  on  common 
ground,  enable  us  to  see  how  this  may  be  true } 

Finally,  coming  once  again  to  the  topic  of  heredity,  let 
us  restate  the  objection  made  by  Romanes  to  the  view  that 
life  may  begin  with  a  differential  reaction,  or  that  such  a 
differential  reaction  could  not  be  a  variation  preserved  by 
natural  selection.  He  says,  in  a  passage  already  quoted 
in  part:^  ''Does  the  organism  learn  to  make  new  adjust- 
ments, or  to  modify  old  ones,  in  accordance  with  the  results 
of  its  own  individual  experience .?  If  it  does  so,  the  fact 
cannot  be  due  simply  to  reflex  action  in  the  sense  above 
described  [i.e.,  repetitions  of  old  reactions  under  the  law  of 
habit]  ;  for  it  is  impossible  that  heredity  can  have  provided 
in  advance  for  innovations  upon  or  alterations  in  its  own 
machinery  during  the  lifetime  of  a  particular  individual." 

This  difficulty,  as  we  saw,  led  Romanes  to  throw  over 

1  Loc.  cit.,  p.  20  f. 


OuicoJic:    Habit  and  Acconiuiodation. 


2  19 


his  own  criterion  of  mind,  and  to  hold  that  all  adaptations, 
including  those  selective  reactions  which  he  had  made 
characteristic  of  mind,  were  reached  in  the  lifetime  of 
individuals.  Further,  this  position,  if  true,  would  lead 
inevitably  to  a  Lamarckian  theory  of  heredity,  which  in- 
deed Romanes  held ;  for  if  no  hereditary  variation  can  pro- 
vide for  future  adaptations,  then  no  past  adaptations  can 
have  been  provided  for  by  variations  to  which  they  were 
future,  and  so  all  actual  adaptations  must  have  arisen  by 
use,  heredity  being  solely  the  bridge  of  transmission  from 
father  to  son. 

But  we  are  now  able  to  see,  from  the  results  we  have 
reached,  not  only  that  there  is  a  third  alternative,  but  also 
that  this  statement  of  Romanes  is  not  true.  The  third 
alternative  is  that  life  began  with  a  habit,  the  very  method 
of  which  does  include  a  process  which  provides  for  the 
continual  modification  of  its  own  results. 

If  we  accept  this  alternative,  then  I  have  shown  how 
new  adaptations  can  be  secured  inside  of  this  habit.  But 
if  we  do  not  accept  it,  preferring  to  believe  with  Spencer 
in  a  form  of  earlier  life  which  showed  quite  formless  and 
diffused  contractions,  we  are  able  still  to  see  how  such  a 
pseudo-habit  may  have  come  about  as  a  variation.  The 
only  necessary  feature  of  this  variation  would  be  that 
nutrition  increase  expansive  and  varied  movements;  that 
is  all.  The  result  would  be  that  the  stimulations  afford- 
ing nutrition  would  be  hit  upon  and  gained  oftener  by 
these  organisms  than  by  others,  and  so  a  habit  of  get- 
ting greater  variety  and  richness  of  such  stimulations  in 
this  way  would  be  secured,  and  new  accommodations  made 
which  would  break  up  the  habits  transmitted  by  heredity. 
Would  not  this  be  just  the  state  of  things  which  Romanes 


2  20  The   Theory  of  Development. 

declares  impossible  ?  —  heredity  providing  for  the  modifi- 
cation of  its  own  machinery?  Heredity  not  only  leaves 
the  future  free  for  modifications,  it  also  provides  a  method 
of  life  in  the  operation  of  which  modifications  are  bound 
to  come,  and  further,  —  and  this  is  the  most  remarkable 
fact  in  the  whole  case  —  it  provides  that  these  modifica- 
tions shall  take  form  in  the  great  twofold  accommodation 
of  movements  corresponding  to  pleasure  and  pain,  thus 
making  the  very  fact  of  accommodation  itself  the  great 
deep-seated  habit  of  organic  life. 


CHAPTER   VIII. 

The  Origin  of  Motor  Attitudes  and  Expressions. 
§  I.    General  View. 

In  ordinary  usage,  the  word  '  expression  '  stands  for  a 
passibly  definite  thing.  We  mean,  when  we  use  it,  to 
say  that  the  signs,  which  we  see  in  face,  attitude,  deport- 
ment, etc.,  of  a  man  or  beast,  mean  something ;  and  that 
this  meaning  is  what  the  mental  process  or  state  of  the 
individual  or  creature  under  observation  really  is,  or  what 
he  really  intends  to  have  us  take  his  state  to  be.  He 
expresses  something  to  me  when  I  gather  from  certain 
signs  about  his  body,  such  as  those  I  have  mentioned, 
certain  facts  to  be  true  about  his  mind  or  consciousness. 
The  phrases,  'facial  expression,'  'verbal  and  rhetorical 
expression,'  'emotional  expression,'  etc.,  all  have  this  com- 
mon idea  at  bottom. 

Just  as  soon  as  we  have  come  to  ask  how  expression  is 
possible,  how  it  comes  that  these  external  signs  can  be 
trusted  to  convey  the  truth  about  the  mind  which  lies 
within,  we  see  that  a  whole  philosophy  of  development  is 
required  to  give  us  an  answer ;  a  philosophy  of  the  devel- 
opment, that  is,  of  mind  and  body  together.  It  will  not 
do  to  give  an  explanation  simply  of  one  mental  state,  like 
grief,  expressing  itself  in  one  group  of  signs,  like  weeping ; 
that   might  be  solved  by  saying  that  the  body  had  been 


222  Motor  Attitudes  and  Expire ssioiis. 

created  for  just  this  use  by  the  mind.  But  when  we  come 
to  see  that  all  possible  mental  states  have  their  appropriate 
signs,  all  in  a  system,  and  that  each  animal  consciousness 
has  a  system  of  signs,  and  all  the  same  system,  then  we 
have  to  account  not  merely  for  the  single  cases,  but  for  the 
system,  as  a  system.     And  this  is  a  very  different  matter. 

Let  us  take,  for  example,  the  facts  of  suggestion  as 
they  have  been  set  forth  above.  Suggestion  we  found 
to  involve  a  gradual  series  of  changes,  transitions,  stages, 
in  the  action,  behaviour,  attitudes  of  the  child,  according 
as  he  experiences  changes,  transitions,  stages  of  treatment 
and  stimulation  from  his  surroundings.  All  his  signs  or 
expressions  are  very  gradually  formed  out  of  previous 
signs.  And  no  one  of  them  can  be  understood  except 
when  considered  in  relation  to  those  which  went  before. 
They  all,  in  short,  constitute  a  developing  system  and 
represent  the  mind  also,  as  it  is  also  considered  as  a 
developing  system. 

And,  again,  if  we  did  not  know  beforehand  how  a  par- 
ticular experience  would  manifest  itself  in  the  system  of 
signs,  the  signs  simply  as  such  would  have  no  meaning 
whatever  to  us ;  they  would  not  be  signs  of  anything. 
Suppose  I  observe  the  movements  of  a  complicated  ma- 
chine, going  on  in  a  series, — a  machine  which  I  do  not 
understand.  Its  movements  are  not  signs  or  expressions 
to  me  of  anything.  They  really  are  signs,  however, 
expressions  of  the  plan  of  action  of  the  machine,  stages 
in  the  idea  or  state  of  consciousness  of  the  designer,  which 
the  machine  embodies.  And  as  soon  as  I  understand  the 
machine,  which  means  as  soon  as  I  have  the  same  state 
of  consciousness  or  idea  that  he  had,  then  the  movements 
in  their  series  or  system  do  become  signs,  real  expressions 


The    Theory  of  ' Ejnotional  Expression!     223 

to  me.  I  must  be  then  actually  introduced  into  the  same 
system  as  the  idea  and  the  machine,  in  order  to  find  what 
the  expressions  mean. 

Looking  at  the  child's  expressions  again,  we  see  that 
they  are  expressions  to  us  only  because  we  are  in  the 
same  system,  —  the  human,  the  life  system,  —  with  the 
child.  I  have  gone  through  the  same  systematic  evolu- 
tion of  signs  that  he  is  going  through.  So  the  question 
of  the  origin  of  expression  again  widens  itself  out  mag- 
nificently. It  stands  for  an  answer  thus  :  not  only  why 
do  the  child's  expressions  —  mind  and  body  together  — 
develop  on  such  a  system,  but  also  why  do  all  of  us  who 
understand  the  signs, — man,  child,  beast, — find  our- 
selves in  the  same  system  of  signs  intelligible  and  usable 
by  us  all.  How  can  we  account  for  a  great  organic  mind 
system  in  the  world,  and  with  it  how  account  for  its 
organic  embodiment  in  the  system  of  signs  which  we 
call  expression } 

This,  it  is  evident,  makes  expression  a  function  of 
organic  evolution,  and  really  identifies  the  science  of 
expression  with  the  great  branch  of  biological  science 
called  Morphology.  For  signs  of  functions  are  always 
shapes  of  organs,  temporary  or  permanent,  and  a  system 
of  shapes  is  always  a  system  of  permanent  signs. 

We  must  accordingly  appeal  to  the  theory  of  develop- 
ment to  explain  all  expressions  whatever. 

§  2.    The   Theory  of  *  Eviotioiial  Expression! 

Recent  discussion  has  brought  out  certain  great  facts 
about  the  psycho-physics  of  emotion. 

The  outcome  of  discussion  takes  form  about  two  or  three 


2  24  Motor  Attitudes  and  Expressions. 

general  principles  which  I  am  now  aiming  to  state  in  their 
general  bearing  upon  the  origin  of  'expression'  generally. 
It  is  evident  that  the  word  '  emotion '  may  be  used  in  two 
very  distinct  senses.  Emotion  may  mean  a  phenomenon 
of  instinct  purely,  the  '  emotions '  which  a  baby  a  year 
old  has  already  got,  such  as  fear,  anger,  jealousy,  sympa- 
thy, etc.;  or  'emotion'  may  designate  a  phenomenon  of 
ideas  —  something  that  the  baby  has  yet  to  get,  such  as 
the  emotions,  or  sentiments,  which  involve  thought  about 
things,  contemplation,  the  more  or  less  adequate  under- 
standing of  the  meanings  of  things  in  relation  to  the  per- 
son who  is  affected.  A  child,  for  example,  starts  at  a  loud 
noise,  and  shows  all  the  signs  of  the  emotion  of  fear ;  but 
the  adult  fears  a  loud  noise  only  when  he  has  some  reason 
to  think  that  it  means  danger  to  him. 

If  this  distinction  be  true,  —  and  no  one  denies  the  dis- 
tinction in  fact,  apart  from  the  terms  which  have  often 
hopelessly  obscured  it,  —  it  becomes  evident  that  the  ques- 
tion as  to  what  the  components  of  emotional  'expression' 
are,  is  really  a  genetic  question.  All  the  elements  of  the 
problem  of  the  genesis  of  'expressions'  generally  —  that 
is,  of  the  laws  of  motor  development  —  must  be  recognized 
and  woven  into  an  adequate  theory. 

And  when  we  come  to  do  this,  two  very  important  facts 
come  before  us,  of  which  it  is  our  duty  to  give  some  ac- 
count. We  have  first  to  ask  why  each  so-called  emotion 
has  the  particular  channels  of  'expression,'  or  motor  dis- 
charges, which  it  has  ;  and  second,  how  it  comes  that  the 
same  system  of  discharges  or  expressions  answer  for  the 
two  kinds  of  emotion  which  I  have  distinguished  as,  in  one 
case,  a  phenomenon  of  instinct  and,  in  the  other  case,  a 
phenomenon  of  ideas.     How  is  it  that  what  I  fear  because 


The   Theory  of  '  Einotional  Expression!     225 

I  have  some  reasonable  L;roiind  for  fearing  it,  the  child  also 
fears  by  instinct,  and  that  I  make  the  same  contractions, 
etc.,  in  my  state  of  fear  that  he  does  in  his  ? 

The  first  of  these  questions  may  be  called  the  '  psycho- 
physical '  question  of  emotion.  It  asks  how  the  mental 
state  which  we  psychologists  call  emotion  is  actually 
related,  in  any  particular  case,  to  the  movements,  contrac- 
tions, vaso-motor  changes,  etc.,  which  the  body  shows 
when  it  is  'expressing'  this  emotion.  Does  the  mental 
state,  the  true  emotion,  come  first,  and  itself  cause  the 
bodily  expression,  as  we  ordinarily  seem  to  think }  Or  is 
the  emotion  itself  the  consciousness  that  these  violent 
bodily  changes  are  already  taking  place }  This  is  the 
problem  which  men  are  now  discussing,  and  it  is  this 
which  I  wish  to  take  up  in  the  light  of  the  principles  of 
development  which  have  been  already  laid  out  in  the 
earlier  pages.  And  we  can  ask  ourselves  the  question  in 
somewhat  the  following  form,  namely :  How  could  what 
we  know  as  emotion,  together  with  what  we  know  as 
emotional  expression,  have  arisen  in  the  course  of  devel- 
opment, and  what  does  development  teach  us  of  the  rela- 
tion of  these  two  things  to  each  other } 

When,  then,  we  come  to  take  a  broad  survey  of  motor 
development,  in  the  race  no  less  than  in  the  child,  we  are 
able  to  signalize  certain  great  principles  which  we  cannot 
do  without  :  principles  which  stand  out  in  biology  and  in 
psychology  as  essential  to  any  theory  of  development. 
The  whole  range  of  facts  fairly  available  for  the  genetic 
theory  of  emotion  reactions  should  be  brought  under  our 
three  principles  :  Habit,  used  broadly  to  include  the  effects 
of  repetition  and  heredity,  as  the  postulate  of  '  race  experi- 
ence '  makes  use  of  it  ;  Accommodation,  the  law  of  adapta- 
Q 


226  Motor  Attitudes  and  Expressions. 

tion  in  all  progressive  evolution,  no  matter  how  adaptation 
is  secured  ;  and,  earliest  and  most  fundamental.  Dynamo- 
genesis,  expressing  the  fact  simply  of  regular  connection 
between  the  sensory  and  motor  sides  of  all  living  reactions, 
as  to  amount  of  process.  These  principles  have  already 
been  given  some  notice.  Let  us  see,  therefore,  how,  if  we 
assume  that  these  three  principles  are  all  the  '  rules  of 
procedure'  which  the  organism  has  to  work  under, — how, 
then,  emotion  and  its  expression  can  have  come  to  be. 

I.  As  for  the  fact  of  Dynamogenesis  :  what  bearing  has 
this  principle  upon  the  theory  of  emotion .?  Much  every 
way.  We  must  bear  in  mind  that  this  principle  has 
always  been  acting,  and  always  is  acting,  in  every  reaction 
we  make ;  that  our  reactions  have  grown  to  be  what  they 
are  in  all  cases  by  direct  reflection  of  what  we  have 
received  or  experienced  ;  that  just  as  certain  as  it  is  that 
we  are  experiencing  new  things  every  instant  of  our  lives, 
just  so  certain  is  it  that  we  are  expressing  these  new 
experiences  in  every  reaction  that  we  make.  Every  one 
is  familiar  with  Professor  James's  view  that  our  minds 
never  have  just  the  same  contents  twice  over.  Of  course 
they  do  not.  But  the  correlative  fact  has  not  had  the  same 
recognition.  If  we  never  experience  the  same  twice,  so  we 
never  act  the  same  twice.  The  new  x  of  content,  added  to 
the  old  c  of  content,  must  call  out  a  new  x  of  action,  added 
to  the  old  a  of  action.  If  then  our  reaction  is  always  a  -{-x, 
just  as  the  content  which  it  follows  upon  is  c -^  x,  then  no 
reaction  is  ever  that  and  that  only  which  is  guaranteed  by 
habit,  inheritance,  and  what  not,  in  the  past. 

For  it  is  easy  to  see  that  in  every  action  of  every  organ- 
ism at  every  stage  of  development  there  are  two  elements 
of  discharge ;  an   element    due    to   habit   solely,   the   dis- 


The    Theory  of  'Enwfioual  Expressiou!      227 

charges  which  are  let  loose  by  the  old  quantity  of  content 
into  the  pathways  fixed  by  association,  and  then,  second, 
an  element  of  new  discharge  due  to  the  new  quantity  of 
content. 

With  this  distinction  in  mind,  we  come  to  ask  whether 
emotion  is  present  in  this  state  of  things.  Suppose  we 
are  taking  a  particular  instance  of  fear  when  we  know  that 
it  is  present,  and  then  ask  what  factor  in  this  whole  state 
of  central  process  the  emotion  really  corresponds  to.  We 
find  several  possible  answers. 

The  emotion  may  be  said,  in  the  terms  of  one  possible 
answer,  to  be  due  to  the  presence  of  the  new  elements  of 
content ;  to  the  commotion  made  by  new  presentations, 
images,  play  of  thoughts,  etc.,  and  the  expression  to  be 
due  to  the  passing  off  of  this  commotion  to  the  muscles. 
The  reply  to  this  view  seems  easy  when  we  remember  that 
with  the  instinctive  emotions,  our  case  of  the  child's  fear, 
it  is  a  very  old  familiar  thing,  not  a  new  thing  at  all,  which 
excites  the  emotion  ;  yet  granted  this,  we  still  may  say 
that  the  discharge  due  to  the  new  elements  of  content  in 
other  cases  of  emotion,  not  so  clearly  instinctive,  must  on 
our  view  of  excess  discharge,  give  some  feeling  of  either 
pleasure  or  pain,  and  it  is  possible  that  the  pleasure  or 
pain  tone  of  all  but  the  instinctive  emotions  arises  in 
this  way.  It  is  an  element  in  consciousness  brought  about 
by  new  accommodation  conditions. 

Yet  this  again  may  be  disputed.  One  may  admit  the 
new  element  of  discharge  due  to  dynamogenesis,  but  then 
add  a  pertinent  view.  He  may  distinguish  content  +  its 
expression,  from  content  -\- feeling  oi  its  expression;  say- 
ing that  there  is  no  consciousness  or  feeling  of  the  new 
element  of  motor  process  until  it  is  itself  reported  as  a 


228  Motor  Attitudes  and  Expressions. 

new  element  of  sensory  content.  Quite  possible  ;  it  may 
be  so,  if  the  nervous  system  has  developed  that  way.  But 
we  are  convinced  that  it  has  not  developed  that  way.  We 
have  found  it  necessary  to  hold  that  the  pleasure  repre- 
sents the  heightened  organic  process  from  which  the  excess 
discharge  which  issues  in  dynamogeny  is  itself  released. 
Of  course,  as  has  been  said  above,  the  effect  of  the  dis- 
charge in  movement  is  reported  back  in  a  new  element  of 
pleasure  or  pain,  but  that  is  only  claiming  for  it  in  turn 
an  influence  upon  the  vital  processes  whose  condition  is 
the  sole  direct  ground  of  pleasure-pain  consciousness. 

So  we  may  safely  say  as  the  result  of  the  action  of  dyna- 
mogenesis  that  there  is  in  all  emotion  —  as  in  every  state 
f  consciousness  in  which  there  are  new  elements  of  content 
—  a  tingeing  of  pleasure  or  pain  due  to  the  presence  of 
these  new  elements  of  content  ;  and  that  there  are  in  all 
actions,  under  the  same  conditions,  new  elements  of  dis- 
charge which  give  part  of  the  movements  involved  in  the 
so-called  expression  of  that  state  of  consciousness. 

II.  With  this  result  well  in  mind,  let  us  inquire  more 
fully  into  the  influence  of  the  second  of  our  principles, 
Habit. 

It  is  now  evident  that  a  motor  reaction  of  any  kind  has 
always  two  stimulating  antecedents :  one  the  influence 
fixed  by  habit,  and  the  other  the  influence  of  the  new  ele- 
ments of  content  presented  by  the  environment.  But  we 
know  that  habit  tends  to  make  reactions  automatic  and 
reflex  ;  and  that  consciousness  tends  to  evaporate  from 
such  reactions.  As  I  put  it  long  ago,  "psychologically,  it 
[Habit]  means  loss  of  oversight,  diffusion  of  attention, 
subsiding  consciousness."  ^     Hence  we  must  admit  that  the 

1  Feeling  and  Will^  p.  49. 


The   Theory  of  'Emotional  Expression'      229 

reactions  most  dominated  by  habit  —  the  smoothest,  most 
inherited,  most  instinctive  reactions  —  have  least  conscious- 
ness. And,  on  the  other  hand,  where  habit  is  least  influ- 
ential, where  the  content  is  largely  new,  where  the  pleasure 
or  pain  of  its  assimilation  is  great,  where  attention  and 
effort  are  strained,  where  excitement  runs  high  —  in  all 
these  cases  tlie  stimulating  influence  is  new,  one  which 
has  not  yet  been  brought  under  the  influence  of  habit,  and 
so  one  which  adds  a  new  dynamogenic  influence  to  the 
reaction. 

It  turns  out,  however,  that  just  those  'expressive'  reac- 
tions which  are  most  instinctive  and  reflex  (fear,  anger, 
joy,  etc.)  really  do  carry  with  them  most  of  the  conscious- 
ness which  we  call  emotion  —  certainly  vivid  and  disturbed 
enough.  What  then  shall  we  say  }  Either  that  there  are 
really  present  other  new  elements  of  content  additional  to 
the  regular  antecedents  of  the  reflex  ;  or  that  the  emotion 
is  not  the  antecedent  of  the  expression  at  all,  but  that  the 
reverse  is  true  —  the  emotion  is  consequent  upon  the 
expression.  We  cannot  hold  to  the  former  alternative. 
Where  are  the  adequate  stimulants  in  conscious  content, 
new  or  old,  to  the  newly  hatched  chick's  wild  fear  of  the 
hawk }  So  we  must  take  the  other  alternative,  and  Jiand 
over  all  this  class  of  reactions  to  the  theory  which  holds  that 
the  emotion,  as  far  as  it  has  fixed  instinctive  forms  of  ex- 
pression, follows  upon  the  expression.  I  have  no  hesita- 
tion, therefore,  in  adopting  the  '  effect '  theory  of  emotion 
recently  announced  by  Lange  and  James  as  regards  in- 
herited emotional  expression  excited  by  constant  definite 
objects  of  presentation. 

Emotion  is,  on  this  view,  therefore,  no  exception  to  our 
law   of   ontogenetic   growth  :   the   law   that  that   which  is 


230  Motor  Attitudes  and  Expressions. 

habitual  is  accompanied  by  least  consciousness.  The  high 
consciousness  in  emotion  is  a  reflex  effect.  But  we  would 
expect,  on  the  other  hand,  that  in  all  the  ideal  states  of 
mind,  in  all  the  new  complications  of  content  to  which  the 
attention  has  to  get  adjusted,  in  all  emotional  states  which 
do  not  attach  immediately  and  unreflectively  to  conscious 
objects  of  presentation,  —  that  in  all  these  cases  the  excit- 
ing influence  should  have  the  dynamogenic  effect  already 
noted,  and  so  give  elements  of  expression  over  and  above 
the  reactions  due  to  habit. 

Reverting,  now,  to  our  fancied  situation,  a  state  of 
emotion  in  actual  operation,  we  find  that  we  have  made 
certain  simplifications.  The  pleasure  or  pain  of  it  is,  at 
least  in  part,  due  to  the  presence  of  new  elements  in  the 
object  which  causes  the  emotion  ;  the  expression  of  it  is 
due,  at  least  in  part,  to  the  new  discharges  let  loose  by 
the  central  process  corresponding  to  this  pleasure  or  pain ; 
the  expression  is  further  due,  certainly  in  part,  to  old 
reactions  or  habits  of  movement  which  have  become  com- 
mon in  the  presence  of  this  object  or  others  of  its  class  ; 
and  the  quality  of  the  emotion,  the  character  it  has  as 
making  it  different  from  other  emotions,  is  due,  certainly 
in  part,  to  the  feeling  of  these  factors  of  the  expression 
actually  taking  place.  So  far,  then,  we  have  accounted 
for  something  of  the  pleasure  or  pain  of  an  emotion,  some- 
thing of  its  expression,  and  something  of  its  peculiar  quality 
or  character.  Can  we  do  more  }  Let  us  see  what  we  can 
get  out  of  our  third  principle,  '  Accommodation.' 

III.  The  law  of  Accommodation  has  appeared  to  us 
to  be  operative  in  two  ways  :  first,  as  expressing  the  mode 
of  each  new  adaptation  under  the  action  of  dynamogene- 
sis,  —  the    organism  adapts   itself  by  the   selection,   from 


The    Theory  of  'Emotional  Expression'.       231 

excess  discharges,  of  movements  fittest  to  aid  vitality,  — 
this  is  one  aspect  of  accommodation  ;  and  it  also  secures 
by  the  action  of  association,  the  repetition  and  permanent 
fixing  of  these  fittest  movements  in  great  habits  whicli 
are  the  regular  utility  reactions,  reflexes,  instincts,  fixed 
expressions,  etc.,  of  the  organism,  —  this  is  the  other 
aspect  of  accommodation.  Now,  the  bearing  of  the  second 
of  these  aspects  of  accommodation  on  the  theory  of  emo- 
tion gives  us  great  expectations  at  once,  for  it  enables 
us  to  bring  into  its  complex  conditions  all  of  the  organic 
and  mental  elements  which  are  regularly  associated  with 
those  factors  already  pointed  out.  Let  us  look  a  little  at 
details. 

We  found  that  a  new  object  served  to  bring  new 
vitality  conditions,  new  pleasure  or  pain,  new  movements 
by  dynamogenesis.  But  these  new  elements  only  get 
fixed  for  recurrence  as  they  fit  into  old  adjustments,  caus- 
ing differentiations  of  them.  But  this  means  that  the  new 
gets  associated  with  the  old  ;  so  that  when  it  comes  again, 
all  the  old  which  its  presence  touched  on  the  former 
occasion  now  clusters  to  the  front  in  company  with  it. 
I  tremble  and  fly  at  the  sight  of  a  lion,  because  he 
reminds  me  of  a  lion's  power  and  disposition  ;  and  my 
attitudes  in  the  presence  of  such  formidable  creatures  are 
those  of  trembling  and  flight.  So,  in  brief,  we  have  a 
great  mass  of  associated  elements,  both  of  content  and 
of  movement,  rushing  into  consciousness  in  consequence 
of  every  new  adjustment,  and  in  addition  to  its  present 
intrinsic  motor  and  emotional  value.  This  gives  more 
quality  and  more  pleasure  or  pain  to  the  state  of  emotion. 

This  principle  applies  directly,  also,  to  all  the  organic, 
visceral,   conaesthetic,    sensations    so   vividly   present    and 


232  Motor  Altitudes  and  Expressions. 

soul-filling  in  many  emotions.  All  habitual  reactions  in 
states  of  emotion,  as  they  become  more  reflex,  and  hence 
less  conscious  in  their  actual  carrying  out,  yet  come  to 
give,  nevertheless,  by  their  return  wave  upon  conscious- 
ness, overpowering  floods  of  organic  sensation.  I  think  it 
is  due  to  the  fact  that  it  is  by  muscular  movements  of  ex- 
cess with  accommodation,  by  violent,  often  long-continued, 
protective  or  offensive  reactions,  that  violent  pleasure  and 
pain  conditions  of  vitality  were  originally  reflected  in 
action,  in  the  history  of  animal  life.  This  exhaustive 
muscular  process  taxed  for  its  maintenance  all  the  organic 
processes,  —  heart,  lungs,  etc.,  —  so  that  a  great  mass  of 
organic  sensations  were  thrown  into  consciousness,  and 
by  unbroken  association  came  to  stand  themselves,  in  union 
with  muscular  sensations,  for  the  damaging  or  beneficial 
kinds  of  stimulation  that  at  first  excited  pleasure  or  pain, 
even  when  the  object  actually  present  has  no  intrinsic 
emotional  value.  And  as  far  as  they  were  themselves 
vitahzing  and  devitalizing,  they  are  directly  hedonic,  and 
so  go  on  to  increase  their  own  good  or  bad  effect.  It  is 
thus  probable  that  in  our  more  violent  organic  reactions 
in  emotion,  the  organism  is  recapitulating  in  amount  the 
wear  and  tear  of  the  long  processes  of  offence  or  defence 
that  animal  forms  were  accustomed  to  go  through  when 
they  met  the  objects  which  now  tend  to  excite  these 
emotions  and  sensations  in  us. 

This  element  explains  most  of  what  is  usually  called 
'emotional  expression,'  and  we  now  see  that  it  explains 
most  of  the  quality  and  much  of  the  pleasure  and  pain  of 
all  those  emotions  which  have  instinctive  expression.  So 
far,  then,  the  body  of  emotion  is  largely  filled  up  with 
consciousness    of    habitual   actions   actually   shooting    off, 


The    Theory  of  'Emotional  Expression'       233 

these  habits  being,  in  their  origin  and  gradual  formation 
in  race  experience,  selections,  all  the  way  through,  from 
excess  reactions  springing  from  different  vital  conditions. 
Certain  laws  of  their  development  have  been  formulated 
by  Darwin  and  others  ;  laws  which  answer  the  great  ques- 
tion why  a  particular  emotion  is  present  when  particular 
bodily  attitudes,  vaso-motor  changes,  visceral  sensations, 
are  also  present.     This  I  speak  of  further  below. 

And  the  other  aspect  of  the  principle  of  accommodation 
lets  in  more  light  on  emotion.  In  this  aspect  of  accom- 
modation—  named  first  in  order  above — we  find  the 
sphere  of  new  adjustments  secured  by  the  constant  modi- 
fication and  differentiation  of  old  ones.  There  is  a  great 
field  of  such  accommodation  in  the  fact  and  function  of 
attention,  a  thing  of  such  clear  mental  value  and  such 
wide  bearings  that  special  sections  are  devoted  below  ^ 
to  its  rise  and  development.  Here  and  now  I  can  only 
assume  what  is  there  argued  for,  and  note  the  relation  of 
the  attention,  considered  as  mental  function  of  accommo- 
dation, to  emotion. 

Consciousness,  we  have  seen,  is  the  new  thing  in  nature 

—  the  thing  by  which  organisms  show  in  all  cases  their 
latest  and  finest  adjustments.  And  the  central  fact  of 
consciousness,  its  prime  instrument,  its  selective  agent, 
its   seizing,   grasping,   relating,   assimilating,  apperceiving 

—  in  short,  its  accommodating  element  and  process  —  is 
attention.  This  all  current  psychology  admits.  And  all 
psychology  which  is  aware  of  its  genetic  problems  will 
also  admit  a  further  point ;  this  —  that  in  the  life  of  the 
higher  organisms,  such  as  pre-eminently  human  life,  the 
mind    has    superseded    all    other   agencies   and    processes 

1  Below,  Chap.  X.,  §  3,  and  Chap.  XV. 


2  34  Motor  Attitudes  and  Expressio7is, 

in  aiding  and  securing  adjustments  to  environment.  If 
these  two  things  be  admitted, — the  points,  to  repeat,  that 
mind  is  nature's  great  accommodating  agent,  and  that  at- 
tention is  mind's  great  accommodating  agent,  —  then  it 
follows  that  the  law  of  accommodation  must  get  its  appli- 
cation almost  exclusively,  in  higher  organisms,  in  connec- 
tion with  acts  of  attention. 

Now  in  the  later  chapter  referred  to,  it  is  shown  beyond 
a  peradventure,  in  my  opinion,  that  attention  is  simply 
the  form  which  the  'excess'  process,  found  in  our  earlier 
discussions  to  be  the  means  of  all  organic  accommodation, 
has  taken  on  in  habitual  connection  with  memory,  imagina- 
tion, and  thought.  The  attention  process  is  a  motor  reac- 
tion, involving  all  the  elements  of  such  reactions  to  a 
mental  content,  as  these  reactions  have  become,  by  habit, 
crystallized  in  certain  relatively  fixed  forms  of  reverbera- 
tion, muscular  contraction,  etc.  Just  what  elements  are 
involved  in  it — that  comes  up  later.  Here  we  assume 
this  doctrine  of  attention,  and  go  on  to  ask  its  relation  to 
our  present  topic,  emotion. 

We  see  at  the  outset  that  if  attention  is  the  habitual 
form  of  mental  accommodation,  that  what  we  have  said 
about  the  factors  found  in  lower  emotion  —  the  factors 
all  of  which  are  genetic  elements  present  together,  height- 
ened dynamogenesis,  reflex  feelings  of  discharge,  asso- 
ciated organic  disturbances  flooding  consciousness  —  must 
be  true  also  of  attention.  That  is,  every  act  of  attention 
must  give  all  these  factors  in  kind,  but  on  a  higher  level 
—  a  level  at  which  the  stimulus  which  claims  attention  is 
now  a  mental  image,  memory,  an  idea. 

We  should  have  heightened  dynamogenesis,  looking  at 
the  matter  in  some  detail,  first  felt  as  pleasure  and  pain 


TJie   Theory  of  'Emotional  Expression!       235 

in  the  activity  of  attention  itself  in  receiving,  holding, 
using  new  ideas.  This  is  just  what  psychology  does  find 
and  calls  '  ideal '  pleasure  and  pain  ;  and  it  is  the  basis  of 
the  doctrine  of  Ward  and  the  Herbartians  that  the  play 
of  ideas  is  the  locus  of  all  hedonic  consciousness.  Ideal 
pleasure,  simply  as  such,  abstracted  —  as  of  course  in  fact 
it  cannot  be  —  from  all  qualities  in  the  content  is,  on  the 
physical  side,  heightened  nervous  process  in  the  organic 
seat  of  the  higher  content  attended  to.  It  is  just  the  same, 
for  ideas,  that  lower  pleasure  is  for  sensation  contents. 

Second,  we  ought  to  have  certain  qualitative  elements 
brought  into  consciousness  from  the  habitual  contractions, 
etc.,  of  attention  itself ;  the  attention  is,  in  large  part, 
certain  constant  reflex  contractions  —  of  brow,  and  glottis, 
movements  of  skin  of  skull,  etc.,  together  with  the  organic 
sensations  of  the  vital  processes  associated  with  these. 
This  is  again  so  evidently  the  case,  that  we  find  certain 
qualities  of  feeling,  called  'emotions  of  function,'  con- 
nected with  movements  of  the  attention :  the  sense  of 
contraction  or  expansion,  of  fatigue,  of  effort,  of  freshness, 
of  curiosity,  of  interest,  etc. 

Then,  third,  a  true  analysis  of  attention  shows  that 
there  are  certain  refinements  of  attention,  whereby  the  ele- 
ments which  go  to  make  it  up  vary  very  markedly  accord- 
ing to  the  character  of  the  idea  or  object  attended  to. 
There  is  visual  attention  to  visual  ideas,  and  auditory 
attention  to  auditory  ideas,  motor  attention  to  ideas  of 
movement,  etc.,  each  made  up  of  its  own  refined  system 
of  contractions  and  organic  effects,  inside  of  the  wider 
circle  of  contractions  and  effects  which  make  them  all 
acts  of  attention  in  the  generic  sense.  Now,  in  as  far 
as    these    smaller    refinements    of    effect    get    themselves 


236  Motor  Attitudes  and  Expressions, 

grouped  into  relatively  independent  habits,  just  so  far 
they  contribute  new  quality  to  the  whole  psychosis  which 
the  given  object  or  idea,  claiming  the  attention  at  the 
moment,  wraps  about  itself.  And  these  qualities  consti- 
tute the  higher  emotional  states  which  we  call  sentiments, 
higher  feelings,  the  aesthetic,  the  ethical,  the  religious, 
etc.i 

The  theory  of  development,  in  short,  requires  that  we 
distinguish  the  hedonic  from  the  qualitative  element  in 
higher  emotion.  Intellect  could  not  have  developed  in  the 
first  place,  nor  have  become  the  magnificent  engine  of 
organic  accommodation,  through  volition,  which  it  is,  if  in- 
tellectual, aesthetic,  and  ^X\\\q.2\ pleasures  were  only  the  reso- 
nance of  instinct  reflexes.  Yet  even  here  the  qualitative 
marks,  the  kind  of  excitement,  the  main  psychosis  apart 
from  the  pleasures  and  pains  of  new  apprehensions,  knowl- 
edges, curiosities,  are  just  as  surely,  and  for  the  same 
genetic  reasons,  the  resonance  of  instinct  reflexes  as  are 
the  gross  fixed  expressions  of  anger,  fear,  etc.,  in  animals. 

So,  taking  stock  of  our  net  outcome,  we  find  that  our 
principles  of  development  have,  assuming  the  develop- 
ment itself,  told  us  to  expect  a  group  of  elements  in 
consciousness  at  certain  stages  of  evolution.  And  when 
we  come  to  examine  and  analyze  consciousness  at  these 
stages,  we  find  that  these  elements  so  grouped  are  just 
what  we  ordinarily  lump  together  and  call  emotion.  And 
the  predominance  of  one  or  other  element  in  a  marked 
degree  in  a  particular  case  is  entirely  the  ground  of  differ- 
ence between  this  case  and  others,  and  is  entirely  a  phe- 
nomenon  of  relative   development.     The   infant,  and  the 

^  The  reader  may  consult  the  classification  and  treatment  of  the  emotions 
given  in  my  Handbook  of  Psychology,  Vol.  II.,  Chaps.  VIII.  ff. 


Hcdonic  Expression  and  its  Law.  237 

animal  which  has  not  that  highest  engine  of  accommoda- 
tion,—  attention,  —  have  the  reflex,  habit-born,  organic 
thing  called,  it  is  true,  emotion;  but  its  quality  is  'rank,' 
unreasonable,  urgent,  a  matter  of  nerves  and  instinct. 
And  that  is  all  the  infant  has,  except  the  pleasures  and 
pains  which  are  also  sensations,  or  qitales  of  sensation. 

But  the  man  —  the  child  plus  mind  —  has  the  higher 
agent  of  accommodation,  attention,  and  that  supreme  form 
of  attention  called  volition  ;  his  emotion  has  added  ele- 
ments, not  different  in  kind,  but  only  in  level,  and  in 
relative  freedom  from  the  grosser  implications  of  organic 
habit.  He  has  refined  emotions  about  his  thoughts,  his 
ideas,  his  ideals,  his  duties,  his  gods. 

My  conclusion  then  is  that  emotion  is,  in  all  cases,  this  : 
pleasure  and  pain  of  accommodation,  plus  pleasure  and 
pain  of  habit,  plus  a  certain  lot  of  qualities  contributed  to 
consciousness  by  more  or  less  habitual  processes  of  muscle, 
organ,  and  gland,  going  on  at  the  time. 

And  the  expression  of  emotion  is,  in  all  cases,  this  : 
certain  more  or  less  habitual  processes  going  on  in  the 
organism,  plus  elements  of  muscular  and  bodily  contraction 
due  to  present  pleasure  and  pain.     That  is  all.^ 

§  3.    Hedonic  Expression  and  its  Law. 

In  the  preceding  section  of  this  chapter  we  found  two 
questions  implicated  in  this  matter  of  expression  :  one  of 
them  we  have  now  attempted  to  answer,  that  which  con- 

^  A  partial  development  of  this  general  view,  with  special  reference  to  cur- 
rent theories  of  emotion,  is  to  be  found  in  my  article, '  The  Origin  of  Emotional 
Expression,'  in  The  Psychological  Review,  I.,  November,  1894,  P-  610.  I  am 
glad  to  say  that  my  conclusions  are  very  near  to  those  reached,  by  analysis, 
by  William  James  in  his  latest  formulation  (see  the  same  Review,  I.,  Septem- 


238         Motor  Attitudes  and  Expressions, 

cerns  itself  with  the  psycho-physics  of  emotion  as  a 
phenomenon  of  consciousness  taken  generally.  We  now 
come  to  the  second  question.  It  brings  up  for  our  con- 
sideration the  fact  of  particular  expressions  as  attaching 
to  particular  emotional  states,  and  asks  how  it  is  that  each 
such  particular  instance  of  organic  and  muscular  expres- 
sion could  have  arisen  and  come  to  be  what  it  is. 

I.  It  has  become  evident  that  the  general  principles  of 
development  apply  to  all  expressions,  and  that  in  explain- 
ing any  particular  case  we  have  only  to  ask  what  aspect  of 
development  is  predominantly  concerned.  At  the  same 
time  it  must  be  equally  true  that  all  such  aspects,  how- 
ever we  may  find  it  necessary  to  consider  them  as  sep- 
arate principles  to  explain  different  classes  of  phenomena, 
must  nevertheless  have  their  common  basis  in  the  one 
original  fact  of  contractility,  with  the  modifications  and 
adjustments  which  it  undergoes  in  phylogenetic  evolution. 

Now  it  has  become  plain  that  all  motor-discharge,  as  far 
as  it  is  differentiated  at  all,  gets  to  be  so  as  an  index  of 
waxing  and  waning  life  processes  of  nutrition,  etc.  And 
we  have  seen  that  the  waxing  and  the  waning  must  have 
been  equally  original  wherever  life  was  present  at  all. 
This  waxing  and  waning  life  process  must  reflect  itself 
in  the  movements  of  the  organism,  giving  two  great  types 
of  movement  in  all  life,  however  low  in  the  biological 
scale.  And  we  have  found  it  possible  in  the  examination 
of  higher  forms  of  life  in  which  consciousness  with  pleas- 
ure and  pain  are  clearly  present,  to  classify  the  organic 

ber,  1894,  p.  516);  conclusions  which,  I  think,  are  not  just  the  same  as  those 
of  the  chapter  on  *  Emotion,'  in  his  Principles  of  Psychology.  The  psychologi- 
cal doctrine  of  the  rise  and  progress  of  emotion  in  the  child  —  its  ontogenesis 
—  I  am  treating  in  detail,  in  addition  to  what  is  said  in  Chap.  XL  §  2,  below, 
in  my  early  volume  of  '  Interpretations.' 


Ilabitual  Hlotor  Attitudes.  239 

manifestations  correlative  to  pleasure  and  pain  under  a 
similar  twofold  effect  on  organic  and  muscular  movement. 
So  it  has  been  simply  the  logic  of  fact  which  has  led  us 
to  say  that  this  twofold  type  of  movement,  showing  rela- 
tive vitality  in  lower  organisms  and  relative  pleasure  in 
the  higher,  is  one  and  the  same  phenomenon  ;  and  that 
even  in  the  lowest  forms  of  life,  waxing  and  waning  vital 
processes  are  to  be  considered  as  the  physiological  ana- 
logue of  the  pleasure-pain  consciousness. 

In  this  fundamental  division  of  movements,  therefore, 
expansions,  heightened  motor  energy,  and  excess  discharge, 
on  the  one  hand,  and  contractions,  lowered  energy,  inhib- 
ited discharge,  on  the  other  hand,  we  have  what  I  venture 
to  call  'hedonic  expression,'  with  the  law  of  its  twofold 
manifestation.  Inside  of  this  all  further  differentiations 
of  movement  must  arise  as  special  adaptations.  It  remains 
to  examine  them  further  with  a  view  to  the  understanding 
of  their  rise  ;  and  in  connection  with  them  further  light 
may  be  expected  upon  this  general  condition  of  them. 

§  4.    Habit iLal  Motor  Attitudes. 

The  teleology  of  all  special  adaptations  of  movement  — 
the  reason  for  their  existence,  the  end  which  they  would 
have  in  view  provided  they  could  think  and  speak  —  now 
becomes  plainer  than  it  was  before.  This  end  is  not  in 
any  sense  expression.  The  organism  has  no  special  ten- 
dency to  show  itself  off,  no  means  of  acquiring  systems  of 
'  signs '  to  show  what  is  in  consciousness  beforehand. 
The  only  such  signs  are  these  very  differences  of  move- 
ment in  type,  which  correspond  to  waxing  and  waning 
vitality  —  to    pleasure    and    pain.     These   are   expressive 


240  Motor  Attitudes  and  Expressions. 

because,  and  only  because,  they  are  different,  and  so 
reflect  differences  in  the  processes  which  issue  in  them. 
The  subsequent  modifications  of  movement  of  any  and 
of  every  kind,  have  quite  a  different  origin.  They  have 
in  view  the  adaptation  of  the  organism  in  further  detail 
to  the  conditions  under  which  the  life  process  exists. 
Their  end,  each  of  them,  is  to  keep  up  the  stimulations 
which  secure  the  waxing,  and  to  avoid  those  which  bring 
about  the  waning  of  life.  How  can  they  be  expressions 
of  what  is  not  yet  secured  or  avoided }  Of  course,  all 
movements  which  do  secure  one  of  these  ends,  and  so 
become  fixed  as  habits  in  the  organism,  may  and  do  then 
become  signs  of  the  effects  on  the  organism  which  it  is 
their  office  to  secure,  and  we  may  then  reverse  the  order 
of  rise  of  the  two  factors  and  consider,  for  convenience, 
the  life  process  cause  and  the  movements  which  are  really 
means  to  it,  effect.  This  is  what  the  phrase  'emotional 
expression'  does.  But  the  'expressions'  of  emotion,  as 
we  have  already  seen,  are  —  apart  from  the  dynamogenic 
issue  of  pleasure  and  pain  —  not  caused  by  the  emotion 
at  all.     The  emotion  is  the  outcome  of  them. 

As  far,  therefore,  as  there  is  any  true  expression,  as  far 
as  there  are  any  movements  which  are  really  in  their  origin 
the  characteristic  outcome  of  what  is  beforehand  in  the 
mind,  it  is  all  summed  up  in  the  one  antithesis  with  which 
life  begins  :  that  between  organic  and  vital  expansion  as 
expressing  pleasure,  and  organic  and  vital  depression  as 
expressing  pain. 

This  may  be  put  in  the  general  statement  already  made, 
that  all  expression,  properly  so-called,  is  Jiedonic  expression, 
which  is  the  reflection,  in  the  organic  and  muscular  func- 
tions, of  the  relative  influence  of  experience  of  any  kind 


Habitual  Motor  Attitudes,  241 

upon  the  vitality  of  the  organism.  It  comes  vividly  before 
us  in  detail  in  the  later  chapter  on  '  Organic  Imitation,'  a 
phrase  which  simply  serves  to  indicate  the  general  method 
by  which,  through  this  one  form  of  expression,  the  organ- 
ism works  its  new  adaptations. 

The  particular  organic  and  muscular  states  which  are 
associated  with  the  emotions,  such  as  fear,  anger,  etc.,  and 
called  popularly  their  expression,  must  have  arisen  not,  as 
we  now  see,  as  expressions  of  anything,  but  as  co-ordina- 
tions and  associations  of  reactions  which  proved  useful  to 
the  organism  in  maintaining  and  improving  its  vitality. 
All  of  them,  then,  were  originally  utility  reactions,  and  arose 
each  in  its  place,  and  the  system  of  them  as  a  whole,  as 
special  adaptations.  They  fall  under  the  theory  of  adapta- 
tion and  exhibit  particular  instances  of  it. 

So  the  question  of  the  rise  of  these  groups  of  movement 
takes  a  new  form,  and  its  answer  comes  to  require  that 
each  such  so-called  expression  shall  be  shown  in  its  origin 
to  have  been  useful  to  the  organism  in  certain  conditions 
of  its  environment. 

This  detailed  inquiry  evidently  belongs  to  the  general 
theory  of  organic  evolution.  Darwin  has  himself  examined 
the  various  instinctive  'expressions'  in  detail,^  and  proved, 
beyond  a  question,  that  most  of  them  were  originally  use- 
ful ways  of  reacting  in  the  storm  and  stress  of  maintaining, 
defending,  and  extending  life.  Further  aid  in  this  tracing 
of  the  evolution  of  expression  has  been  afforded  by  those 
investigators  who  have  analyzed  the  anatomical  and  physi- 
ological conditions  of  each  such  group  of  effects.^ 

The  results  of  their  work  have  not  been  entirely  success- 

1  Expression  of  the  Emotions. 

2  Bell,  The  Anatomy  of  Expression  ;  Mantagazza,  in  several  monographs. 

R 


242  Motor  Attitudes  and  Express i< 


ons. 


fill,  however,  as  concerns  details;  since  there  has  always 
remained  over  a  residue  of  well-marked  effects,  accompany- 
ing equally  well-marked  emotional  states,  which  could  not 
be  shown  to  have  been  useful  to  man  or  animal.  Darwin 
himself  formulated  the  principle  which  states  the  one  real 
organic  requirement,  namely,  the  utility  of  a  group  of  move- 
ments in  the  life-history  of  the  organism.  But  he  did  not 
stop  here.  He  found  it  necessary  to  place  beside  this  prin- 
ciple certain  others,  which  served  to  explain  the  cases  to 
which  the  utility  formula  could  not  be  made  to  apply. 

Darwin's  principle  of  'serviceable  associated  habits,'  how- 
ever, is  all  that  the  case  really  demands  when  we  come  to 
get  an  adequate  view  of  the  process  of  development.  It  is 
now  my  aim  to  show  that  the  theory  of  development  stated 
in  earlier  pages  of  this  book  enables  us  to  restate  the  results 
of  Darwin's  work,  so  as  to  include  all  cases  under  the  one 
great  principle  of  *  serviceable  associated  habit,'  taken  to- 
gether with  that  of  '  hedonic  expression  '  already  explained. 

II.  The  series  of  facts  which  gave  Darwin  greatest 
trouble  are  those  which  he  gathered  together  under  his 
*  law  of  antithesis ' :  cases  of  animal  attitudes  in  certain 
emotional  situations,  which  seemed  to  be  capable  of  serving 
no  useful  purpose  of  any  kind  to  the  animal,  but  which 
were  very  clearly  just  the  reverse  of  other  attitudes,  which 
went  with  the  opposite  emotions  and  were  evidently  useful 
in  connection  with  those  emotions.  For  example, — to  cite 
one  of  the  cases  so  powerfully  illustrated  in  the  photographic 
copies  reproduced  in  Darwin's  book,  — a  dog  in  anger  strikes 
certain  attitudes  of  defence,  such  as  general  rigidity  of 
muscle,  high  back,  bristling  of  hair,  retracted  lip,  forward 
ears,  etc., — all  of  direct  use  in  a  fight  with  his  enemy. 
But  the  dog's  attitudes  when   he  feels  friendly  and  wel- 


Habittcal  Motor  AttiUidcs.  243 

comes  his  master  are  just  the  reverse  —  general  Umber- 
ing of  muscles,  flexible  turnings  of  body,  lowering  of  back, 
fawning,  backing  of  ears,  close-lying  hair,  etc.  The  emo- 
tion is  antithetic,  so  the  expression  is  also  ;  that  is  the 
only  reason,  practically,  which  Darwin  could  give  for  the 
animal's  attitude  in  the  second  case. 

There  are  a  great  many  such  instances  in  the  series 
of  emotional  attitudes  in  animals  and  man.  But  we  have 
only  to  state  the  principle  of  antithesis  clearly,  to  see  that 
it  is  no  principle  at  all,  unless  we  hold  that  the  emotion 
causes  the  expression.  And  even  then,  we  are  no  better 
off,  I  think.  For  we  still  have  to  ask  why  the  emotions 
themselves  are  different.  This,  we  have  seen,  we  can 
only  answer  by  saying  that  they  are  different  because  the 
movements  have  been  different  by  which  the  organism 
got  itself  adjusted  to  the  particular  objects,  etc.,  giv- 
ing these  several  emotions.  We  come,  that  is,  back  to 
movements  again,  and  have  to  explain  why,  in  these  cases, 
the  movements  are  antithetical. 

Darwin  himself  is  as  modest  here  as  elsewhere,  and 
only  says  that  it  is  natural  that  opposite  mental  states 
should  be  associated  with  opposite  physical  states.  But 
there  is  no  reason,  so  far,  that  they  should  in  fact.  Darwin 
here  makes,  quite  unconsciously,  an  incursion  into  the  field 
of  popular  fallacy  and  of  Hegelian  logic.  It  is  a  perfect 
nightmare,  —  which  should  be  left  to  the  Hegelians  to 
revel  in,  — this  reading  into  nature  of  opposites  to  all  her 
facts,  simply  because  the  mind's  forms  of  thinking  go  by 
contraries.  Why,  if  showing  the  fangs  aids  an  animal 
when  he  fi2;hts,  should  coverino^  them  aid  him  when  he 
loves }  His  teeth  are  involved  in  one  case,  but  not  in  the 
other.      If  rigid  length  aids  him  in  standing  up  against  his 


244  Motor  Attihides  and  Expressions, 

enemy  in  a  fight,  wliy  should  contortions  be  indulged  in 
when  he  sees  a  friend  ? 

The  only  general  fact  which  in  advance  seems  to  make 
these  antithesis  likely,  is  the  arrangement  of  the  muscles, 
whereby  they  go  in  pairs,  called  'antagonists.'  Each  mus- 
cle of  such  a  pair  is  held  in  control  by  the  other;  and 
whichever  contracts,  the  other  is  involved  in  some  kind 
of  an  opposite  contraction ;  so  it  is  easy  to  say  that  when 
consciousness  is  in  a  state  which  represents  the  stimulation 
of  one  muscle,  it  is  only  to  be  expected  that  the  passage  of 
consciousness  into  an  opposite  state  will  not  only  release 
the  one  muscle,  but,  by  a  kind  of  organic  rebound,  stimu- 
late the  antagonist.  This  is  physiological  and  true  ;  but  it 
still  in  no  way  explains  the  origin  of  different  contrary  at- 
titudes ;  for  it  is  a  main  task  of  our  theory  of  development 
to  explain  just  this  arrangement  of  the  muscles.  How 
does  it  come  that  there  are  antagonistic  muscles.''  What 
uses  called  them  into  being  }  For  the  muscular  system  has 
developed  by  use  and  fitness.  Once  answer  this  by  show- 
ing the  practical  use  of  both  muscles  of  each  pair  of 
antagonists,  and  we  can  then  explain  both  the  fact  that 
attitudes  are  antithetic,  and  the  further  fact  that  opposite 
emotions  are  there  with  them.  For  we  have  seen  that  it 
is  the  muscular  and  organic  attitudes  and  associations 
which  give  quality  to  the  emotions. 

It  becomes  necessary,  therefore,  to  completely  reverse 
the  popular  conception  of  antithetical  expression  and 
Darwin's  conception  also,  as  far  as  he  leaves  the  facts 
which  he  so  adequately  describes,  and  shares  in  the  theory 
that  an  emotion  causes  its  so-called  expression.  We  must 
find  in  our  theory  of  development  by  means  of  detailed 
motor  adaptations,  ground  for  the   origin   of  a  muscular 


Habitual  Motor  Attitudes.  245 

system  which  works  by  antithesis  of  push  and  pull,  for- 
ward and  backward,  contraction  and  relaxation,  antagon- 
ism, in  short  ;  and  with  it  the  detailed  differences  among 
these  attitudes  themselves,  which  correspond  to  differences 
in  emotions,  as  we  actually  find  them  in  our  experience. 

The  latter  task  is  largely  a  matter  of  detailed  examina- 
tion and  classification  of  the  various  muscular  groups  found 
in  the  different  emotions.  This  has  been  done  with  some 
success  for  many  emotions.  I  shall  not  attempt  to  take 
that  further  here.  The  genetic  problem,  however,  the  rise 
of  antagonism,  is  a  further  question  to  set  before  us. 

It  has  doubtless  occurred  to  readers  of  the  two  pre- 
ceding chapters,  what  account  is  possible  of  the  rise  of 
muscular  and  emotional  antagonism.  The  facts  of  organic 
gain  and  loss,  contraction  and  expansion,  pleasure  and 
pain,  have  already  cost  us  so  many  words  that  it  tends  to 
come  to  mind  at  once  as  an  explanation  of  the  fact  of  an- 
tithetic expression.  What  I  have  said  of  hedonic  expres- 
sion, recognizing  it  as  the  only  true  expression,  leads  us 
to  expect  a  great  division  among  states  of  consciousness 
with  respect  to  their  hedonic  colouring  as  pleasurable  or 
painful.  If  organic  life  has  from  the  start  manifested 
itself  in  two  forms  of  movement,  and  if  all  new  adjust- 
ments have  been  effected  inside  of  this  fundamental 
bifurcation,  then  of  course  the  muscular  system,  in  its 
development,  must  take  on  the  form  of  a  series  of  organs 
fitted  to  carry  this  original  antithesis  into  all  the  details 
of  life.  This  is  exactly  the  account  which  must  be  given 
of  the  rise  of  the  muscular  system,  with  its  pairs  of  antag- 
onists. The  muscles  represent  special  habits  and  combi- 
nations of  movements  fitted  either  to  close  up  upon  and 


246  Motor  Attitudes  and  Expressions. 

hold  stimulations,  or  to  draw  away  from  and  escape  them  ; 
and  these  are  antithetic  ways  of  behaviour. 

It  is  evident,  however,  that  this  explanation  of  antithetic 
functions  was  not  possible  on  the  old  theory  of  the  nature 
of  emotion,  the  theory  that  the  emotions  are  so  many  dis- 
tinct mental  acts  or  functions  which  *  express  '  themselves 
outwards  in  the  muscles.  For  expressions  of  such  a  kind 
might  just  as  well  as  not  come  into  opposition  with  hedonic 
expression,  or  they  might  clash  with  the  reactions  most 
useful  for  the  organism  in  relation  to  its  environment, 
or,  again,  they  might,  by  their  cross  currents,  prevent  the 
development  of  a  muscular  system  on  any  consistent  plan. 
The  old  view  gave  rise  to  all  kinds  of  dualism  ;  the  dual- 
ism between  pleasure-pain  and  emotion  being  most  of  all 
invited. 1 

It  is  the  force  of  such  a  criticism,  implicitly  felt  rather 
than  clearly  recognized,  that  has  led  so  many  psycholo- 
gists to  claim  that  emotion  is  only  a  compounded  state  of 
pleasures  or  pains,  a  position  which  well  deserves  the 
description  given  it  by  James  :  ^  "  This  is  a  hackneyed 
psychological  doctrine,  but  on  any  theory  of  the  seat  of 
emotion  it  seems  to  me  one  of  the  most  artificial  and 
scholastic  of  the  untruths  that  disfigure  our  science.  One 
might  as  well  say  that  the  essence  of  prismatic  colour  is 
pleasure  and  pain." 

This  view  of  antithetical  reactions  is  also  impossible  on 
the  current  biological  theories  of  development ;  that  is, 
either  on  the  theory  that  accounts  for  all  development  by 

1  See  my  criticism  of  such  a  dualism  in  the  work  of  Marshall  {Pleasure, 
Pain,  and  y^sthetics),  in  The  Psychological  Revieiv,  I.,  November,  1894,  p. 
619  f. 

2  The  Psychological  Revieiu,  I.,  September,  1894,  p.  525. 


Habitual  Mo  I  or  Attititdes.  247 

compounded  repetitions  of  reactions,  alone,  or  on  the  more 
psychological  theory  going  by  the  names  of  Spencer  and 
Bain.  For  my  view  requires  us  to  recognize  an  original 
tendency  of  organic  forms  to  react  in  two  antithetical  ways 
with  reference  to  stimulations  which  give  the  two  original 
vital  effects  corresponding  to  pleasure  and  pain  ;  and  that 
none  of  the  earlier  theories  do  give  this  recognition,  I  have 
shown  in  an  earlier  place.  Darwin  held  —  as  far  as  he  took 
up  the  theory  of  ontogenetic  adaptation,  as  I  think  he 
nowhere  did  explicitly  —  the  ordinary  biological  doctrine 
of  adaptation  by  chance  repetition  and  compounding  of 
movements  which  proved  themselves  useful ;  so  of  course 
he  was  unable  to  see  any  real  reason  for  the  existence  of 
systems  of  movements  to  which  no  special  utility  in  race 
history  could  be  assigned.^ 

1  It  may  be  said,  as  it  has  been  said  to  the  writer,  in  conversation,  by  one 
who  is  well  informed  in  biology,  that  this  view  of  mine  requiring  the  distinct 
recognition  of  movements  towards  advantageous  sources  of  stimulation  and 
away  from  what  is  disadvantageous,  is  made  by  biologists,  and  so  there  is  no 
novelty  in  the  position.  With  this  I  do  not  agree  ;  and  it  is  well  to  point  out 
the  fact  that  Darwin  in  this  crucial  case  of  antithetical  movements  did  not  use 
any  such  principle.  And  yet  the  need  of  some  such  real  antithesis  so  strongly 
impressed  the  mind  of  Darwin,  as  is  seen  in  his  detailed  casting  about  in  his 
Chapter  II.  for  some  proof  of  antithesis,  that  his  attitude  seems  to  me  to  throw 
his  authority  somewhat  on  my  side  in  opposition  to  the  current  theories  which 
consider  the  organism  practically  passive  in  its  uniform  responses  to  stimu- 
lation. Passages,  indeed,  might  be  quoted  abundantly  from  Darwin,  which 
show  what  his  doctrine  of  organic  adaptation  probably  would  have  been  if 
he  had  developed  it.  Of  course  biologists  admit  the  fact  that  living  creatures 
of  certain  kinds  behave  as  if  they  found  some  sensations  pleasant  and  others 
repulsive  ;  it  is  the  facts  as  reported  by  biologists  that  I  am  resting  my  case 
upon.  But  they  have  never,  I  think,  made  this  kind  of  antithetical  reaction 
fundamental  to  the  life  process,  nor  have  they  ever  utilized  it  to  explain 
general  motor  adaptations.  It  has  been  treated  instead  as  a  sort  of  outside 
fact  and,  as  it  were,  a  mystery,  a  fact  which  the  chemical  theorists  did  not 
like  to  recognize  at  all,  and  one  which  the  vitalists  cited  in  support  of  'vital 
force,'   '  directive  tendency,'   and   that    kind    of  thing.     Recently   psycholo- 


248  Motor  Attihides  and  Expressions, 

Our  conclusion,  then,  in  regard  to  antithetical  attitudes, 
is  that  antithesis  is  a  fundamental  fact  of  hedonic  ex- 
pression ;  and  as  hedonic  expression  is  the  only  real  ex- 
pression, the  principle  of  antithesis  becomes,  everywhere 
in  motor  development,  the  one  law  of  expression.  The 
other  principle,  already  mentioned,  of  Darwin's,  that  of 
*  serviceable  associated  habits,'  is,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
one  principle  also  in  its  sphere ;  but  its  sphere  is  not 
expression,  —  its  sphere  is  motor  adaptation.  All  adapta- 
tions whatever  —  except  the  first  great  division  of  move- 
ments in  accordance  with  the  law  of  antithesis  —  are 
instances  of  'serviceable  associated  habit.' 

Consequently  we  may  say  that  in  any  organic  attitude 
whatever  the  case  is  the  same  as  we  found  it  to  be,  in  the 
earlier  section,  in  emotional  attitudes.  There  is  the  real 
expression  factor,  the  new  hedonic  element,  issuing  in  new 
antithetical  phases,  by  the  law  of  dynamogenesis  ;  and  there 

gists  have  taken  it  up  as  lending  evidence  to  certain  theories  of  the  '  psychic 
properties  of  matter,'  etc. 

In  short,  this  most  remarkable  of  all  adaptations  in  biology  has  had  just 
about  the  same  treatment  in  that  science  that  the  fact  of  conscious  imitation 
has  had  by  psychologists.  Conscious  imitation  has  been  remarked  upon  ever 
since  Aristotle,  vaguely  described,  and  then  dropped,  simply  because  psycho- 
logical theory  gave  no  opening  for  such  a  mysterious  thing.  I  cite  below  the 
contradictory  utterances  of  certain  psychologists  on  imitation. 

And  when  we  come  to  compare  the  two  facts,  it  is  sufficiently  remarkable 
that  we  are  able  to  reconstruct  the  theory  of  adaptation  in  such  a  way  as  to 
show  that  this  kind  of  organic  selection  by  movement,  and  this  kind  of  imitative 
selection  by  consciousness,  are  the  same  thing.  *  Organic  imitation  '  and  '  con- 
scious imitation  '  —  each  a  circular  process  tending  to  maintain  certain  stimula- 
tions and  to  avoid  others  —  here  is  one  thing.  Organic  and  mental  adaptation  is 
one  process  and  one  only,  and  it  works  by  this  two-fold  contrast  from  the  start. 
If  so,  then  we  have  reclaimed  two  great  outcast  facts,  and  shown  them  to  be 
fundamental  facts.  But  this  intuition,  if  it  be  a  true  one,  and  if  my  thought 
about  it  be  clear,  requires  practically  a  revolution  of  theory  on  both  sides,  the 
organic  and  the  mental. 


Habitual  Motor  Attitudes,  249 

is,  besides,  the  quality  as  such,  the  differencing  'feel'  of 
the  attitude  accomplished,  with  its  habitual  pleasure  or 
pain,  and  all  the  organic  associations,  which  are  in  all  cases 
due  to  the  reflex,  consolidated,  instinctive  habits  of  useful 
action. 

Mr.  Darwin  also  finds  it  necessary  to  recognize  another 
class  of  facts  which  he  is  unable  to  bring  under  either  of 
the  foregoing  principles,  facts  which  he  puts  together  under 
the  so-called  principle  of  'direct  nervous  discharge.'  He 
finds  over  and  above  the  movements  which  show  reactions 
useful  to  the  creature  or  to  his  ancestors,  and  also  over 
and  above  the  movements  antithetical  to  the  foregoing, 
certain  movements  of  the  animal  which  appear  as  such  to 
follow  no  law^  This  very  fact  of  lawlessness,  overflow, 
accidental  issuing  of  the  stimulating  process  right  out  into 
the  muscular  and  organic  systems,  is  expressed  by  the 
phrase  'direct  nervous  discharge';  all  it  means,  therefore, 
as  a  principle,  is  that  we  are  dealing  with  phenomena  of 
stimulation  and  reaction.  Such  cases  are  one's  convulsive 
movements  when  in  a  dentist's  chair,  the  jumping  and 
clapping  of  hands  of  a  child's  glee,  the  lawless  gambolling 
of  playful  lambs,  and  the  skittishness  of  a  horse  on  a  cold 
day,  —  movements  which  arc  not  just  alike  in  any  two  crea- 
tures, nor  just  alike  in  any  two  experiences  of  the  same 
creature,  —  and  with  it  all,  various  general  effects,  such  as 
trembling,  shivering,  fainting  in  fright,  flushing  in  joy,  blush- 
ing in  shame,glandular  secretions,  variations  in  heart  action, 
etc.,  some  of  them  positively  harmful  to  the  organism. 

This  class  of  phenomena  —  facts  which  Darwin  found 
no  use  for  in  the  economy  of  organic  development  —  are, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  my  theory,  most  instructive  and 

^  See  his  detailed  instances,  loc,  cit.,  pp.  66  ff. 


250         Motor  Attitudes  and  Expressio7is. 

valuable  as  evidence.  They  give,  to  my  mind,  very  direct 
proof  of  my  main  thesis  respecting  the  method  of  organic 
adaptation.  This  we  may  see  on  closer  examination, 
although  the  points  are  in  the  main  so  evident  that  the 
exposition  may  seem  tiresome. 

We  have  found  that  increased  vital  energies  tend  to 
produce  heightened  or  excessive  motor  processes,  —  Spen- 
cer's 'heightened  discharge,'  Bain's  'pleasure,'  my  'motor 
excess.'  We  have  found  that  this  and  its  opposite, 
lowered  vitality,  express  themselves  in  antithetical  move- 
ments, expansions  and  contractions,  advancing  and  retreat- 
ing, etc.  Again,  we  have  found  that  it  is  from  these 
antithetical  movements  that  all  further  adjustments  or 
adaptations  are  effected  by  'organic  selection,'  those 
movements  of  either  kind  which  are  useful  being  retained 
as  permanent  utility  reactions.  And  this  scheme  of  course 
assumes  the  constant  presence,  at  every  stage  of  animal 
development,  of  the  excess  discharge  —  the  '  hedonic 
expression '  of  my  earlier  section. 

Further,  the  characteristics  of  movements  which  repre- 
sent unutilized  vital  and  nervous  overflow  are  plain  enough. 
They  should  be  very  diffuse,  indefinite,  purposeless,  highly 
toned  by  pleasure  or  pain  ;  diffuse,  because  they  arise 
from  central  processes  of  such  intensity  as  to  overflow 
the  ordinary  motor  channels  already  fixed  by  heredity 
and  habit ;  indefinite,  because  as  soon  as  they  do  get 
for  themselves  fixed  ways  of  discharge,  representing 
in  any  sense  an  accommodation  of  the  organism  to  the 
stimulations  which  call  them  out,  then  at  once  they  fall 
into  another  category,  that  of  'serviceable  associated 
habit ' ;  purposeless,  because  they  represent  excess  energy 
over  and  above  the  regular   expenditures    called    for   by 


Habitttal  Motor  Attitudes.  251 

habitual  purposive  reactions  ;  and  highly  toned,  because 
their  rise  is  itself  a  phenomenon  of  those  vital  conditions 
which  lie  at  the  basis  of  the  hedonic  consciousness. 

Now  these  are  just  the  characters  which  Darwin  and 
other  writers  attach  to  the  movements  which  illustrate 
his  principle  of  'direct  nervous  discharge.' 

It  is  only,  therefore,  a  step  to  the  conclusion  that  in 
these  movements  we  have,  running  through  all  life  phe- 
nomena, high  and  low,  the  evidence  of  the  excess  pro- 
cesses, and  their  reverse,  required  by  the  theory  of 
development.  •  These  are  just  the  material  from  which 
new  adjustments  are  made.  Certain  of  these  'direct  dis- 
charges '  happen  to  do  something  for  the  organism  which 
it  never  succeeded  in  doing  before,  this  secures  pleasure, 
and  by  the  law  of  further  increased  discharge  through  the 
same  or  associated  channels  again,  these  movements  pass 
over  to  the  reign  of  the  law  of  'serviceable  associated 
habits '  ;  but  with  it  all,  the  issue  in  movement  of  the 
increased  vital  and  pleasure  processes  due  to  success,  has 
again  recruited  or  depleted  the  excess  discharge.  So  the 
'  circular  process  '  goes  on. 

We  should  find,  however,  that  movements  of  this  class 
are  not  quite  lawless,  nor  purposeless.  If  I  am  right  in 
finding  that  they  are  reactions  in  states  of  waxing  and 
waning  vitality  —  that  they  constitute  just  the  hedonic 
expression,  the  only  expression,  properly  speaking,  which 
an  organism  has,  —  then  they  should  of  course  express 
something.  They  should  partake  directly  in  the  charac- 
ters found  to  mark  off  all  antithetic  movements.  Move- 
ments which  accompany  highly  pleasure-toned  psychoses 
should  be  expansive,  forward,  outward,  exciting ;  but  be- 
sides, they  should  carry  with  them  all  the  characteristic 


252  Motor  Attitudes  and  Expressions. 

utility  reactions  which  are  already  associated  with  pleas- 
urable experiences.  Movements,  on  the  other  hand,  which 
accompany  highly  pain-toned  psychoses,  should  be  con- 
tractile, inward,  repressing,  and  should  carry  along  with 
them,  besides,  all  the  attitudes  regularly  associated  with 
painful  experiences. 

Now  I  submit  that  the  close  observation  of  all  these 
confused  —  convulsive,  if  you  will  —  sets  of  movement,  do 
show  this  antithesis  to  a  very  marked  degree.  When 
they  accompany  pleasures  they  are  found  to  involve  not 
only  those  quite  purposeless  movements  which  simply 
mean  diffused  overflow  of  energy,  but  they  show,  more- 
over, two  very  clear  kinds  of  utility  reaction  also.  First, 
in  excessive  joy,  we  find  not  only  the  tremblings,  weepings, 
heart-beatings,  and  muscle-twitchings,  but  also  the  usual 
habitual  signs  of  joy  which  all  pleasurable  experiences 
show  —  the  laugh,  the  facial  expression,  the  voice  tones, 
the  bodily  attitudes ;  and,  further,  certain  tensions  and 
movements  of  very  evident  utility,  in  grasping,  retaining, 
coming-up-to-for-further-possession,  etc.,  found  in  attitudes 
of  welcome  generally.  And  on  the  other  hand,  in  connec- 
tion with  the  random  movements  shown  in  violent  pain,  the 
creatures  also  show  two  classes  of  habitual  attitudes:  first, 
those  of  organic  and  vital  depression,  felt  as  faintness,  par- 
alysis, sweating,  etc.  ;  and  second,  attitudes  and  acts  of 
rebellion,  defence,  escape-by-removal  from  stimulation,  such 
as  frowning,  setting  teeth.  And  the  two  systems  of  atti- 
tude characteristic  of  pleasure  are,  in  general,  antithetic  to 
those  characteristic  of  pain. 

In  fact,  so  clear  is  it  that  these  'direct '  are  movements 
limiting  processes  to  the  ordinary  antithetic  attitudes, 
that  we  are  able  to  look  upon  them  as  end-terms  each  in  a 


Habitual  Motor  Attitudes.  253 

series  which  recapitulates  organic  growth  in  the  acquisition 
of  habits.  Pleasure  begins  by  bringing  out  the  reactions 
which  are  oldest  in  race  utility,  then  as  it  is  continued 
or  increased,  those  of  newer  formation  and  less  univer- 
sality, then  those  peculiar  to  the  individual,  and  finally, 
at  the  limit  of  duration  or  excess  of  intensity,  the  pur- 
poseless convulsive  and  random  movements  of  Darwin. 
And  pain  proceeds  by  a  similar  series  of  manifestations 
—  tracing  reversely  the  series  of  adjustments  acquired  in 
race  and  individual  history,  the  whole  series  being  anti- 
thetic, in  its  great  features,  to  the  corresponding  series  of 
pleasure  attitudes. 

There  is  also  another  principle  clearly,  although  inade- 
quately, recognized  by  Darwin,  which  may  now  be  brought 
out ;  the  principle  made  more  of  in  James'  discussion 
under  the  phrase  'principle  of  analogous  feeling  stimuli.' 
Darwin  added  a  clause  to  his  statement  of  the  law  of 
'serviceable  associated  habit,'  which  brings  under  it  a 
great  class  of  seemingly  useless  muscular  movements. 
He  says  :  "  We  have  now,  I  think,  sufficiently  shown  the 
truth  of  our  first  principle,  namely,  that  when  any  sensa- 
tion, desire,  dislike,  etc.,  has  led  during  a  long  series  of 
generations  to  some  voluntary  movement,  then  a  tendency 
to  the  performance  of  a  similar  movement  will  almost  cer- 
tainly be  excited,  whenever  the  same  or  any  analogous  or 
associated  sensation^  etc.,  although  very  weak,  is  expe- 
rienced, notwithstanding  that  the  movement  in  this  case 
may  not  be  of  the  least  use."  (Italics  mine.)  And  he 
continues  a  little  further  on:  **  When  we  treat  of  the 
special  expressions  of  man,  the  latter  part  of  our  first 
principle  will  be  seen  to  hold  good,  namely,  that  when 
movements,  associated  throuo'h  habit  with   certain  states 


254  Motor  Attitudes  and  Expressions. 

of  mind,  arc  partially  repressed  by  the  will,  the  strictly 
involuntary  muscles,  as  well  as  those  which  are  least 
under  separate  control  of  the  will,  are  liable  still  to  act ; 
and  their  action  is  often  highly  expressive.  Conversely, 
when  the  will  is  temporarily  or  permanently  weakened, 
the  voluntary  muscles  fail  before  the  involuntary."  ^  The 
latter  quotation  may  be  taken  to  be  the  citation  from  the 
voluntary  life  of  an  instance  of  the  principle  that  similar 
or  *  analogous  feeling '  stimuli  tend  to  bring,  in  whole  or 
part,  by  complication,  semi-inhibition,  or  lack  of  inhibition, 
the  reactions  in  movement  which  are  habitual  and  useful 
in  connection  with  the  stimuli  which  they  resemble. 

This  series  of  facts,  which  are,  in  the  sequel,  of  the 
first  importance  for  mental  development,  are  of  especial 
interest  here,  as  showing  the  relation  of  the  theory  of 
development  now  explained  to  the  older  purely  biologi- 
cal theory.  The  latter,  it  will  be  remembered,  finds  the 
exclusive  cause  of  development  in  repetitions  of  reactions, 
under  complicated  conditions  which  force  a  crossing  or 
compounding  of  paths,  in  such  a  way  that  each  single  move- 
ment, in  response  to  each  single  stimulus,  tends  to  lose 
its  identity,  and  to  become  part  of  a  larger  discharge,  which 
issues  in  a  group  of  movements  co-ordinated  for  a  larger 
use  and  function.  The  conception  of  how  this  compound- 
ing takes  place  in  the  organism  is  a  purely  mechanical  con- 
ception ;  a  process  of  the  draining  of  energies,  first  in  the 
channels  which  are  largest,  most  permeable,  and  most  prac- 
tised, and  then  into  those  less  and  less  so  ;  the  whole  group 
being  called  out  on  later  occasions,  as  a  group,  as  far  as  any 
stimulus  which  the  organism  gets,  starts  the  central  energies 
into  channels  adequate  to  effect  the  discharge  as  a  whole. 

^  Loc.  cit.,  p.  48. 


Habitual  Motor  Attitudes, 


255 


Now  this  conception  of  growing  complexity,  or  co-ordi- 
nation in  reactions,  is  quite  in  order  still,  on  my  theory  of 
adaptation,  and  it  is  indeed  even  more  reasonable  than 
before.  Just  in  as  far  as  the  organism  has  a  means  of 
its  own  of  selecting,  duplicating,  or  maintaining,  its  stimu- 
lations, by  adapted  movements,  as  the  '  circular '  process 
enables  it  to  do,  just  in  so  far  is  a  premium  put  upon  the 
speedy  fixing  of  great  drainage  channels  representing  these 
particular  adapted  movements.  And,  further,  just  so  far 
is  there  created  the  tendency  of  other,  accidental  and 
more  trivial,  useful  or  useless,  processes,  to  drain  off  into 
these  great  channels.  It  is  only  an  instance  of  this 
that  the  child  learns  with  such  remarkable  speed  to  make 
great  happy  adjustments,  each  then  leading  to  a  number 
of  smaller  adjustments.  The  early  start  which  all  organ- 
isms have  in  the  antithesis  between  the  two  classes  of 
movements  which  express  waxing  and  waning  vitality,  and 
hedonic  contrasts,  all  in  one  —  this  secures  a  splendid 
organic  tendency  directly  in  the  lines  of  discharge  which 
smaller  special  adjustments  need  to  issue  in,  and  which, 
but  for  this  preparation  beforehand,  the  smaller  ones 
would  have  to  make  by  actual  compoundings  among 
themselves. 

In  interpreting  this  process  more  closely,  in  the  life- 
history  of  organisms,  two  aspects  of  it  rise  to  claim 
special  remark  —  aspects  which  break  into  psychology  as 
analogies,  or  explanations,  of  far-reaching  importance,  as 
will  appear  later  on. 

In  the  first  place,  there  is  at  every  stage  of  development 
in  the  animal  series,  a  certain  mass  of  normal  process,  *  set 
for  good,'  so  to  speak,  which  the  creature  brings  to  his  ex- 
periences at  birth.     It  may  be  thought  of,  functionally,  as  a 


256  Motor  Attitudes  and  Expressions. 

tendency  of  the  organism  as  a  whole,  called  its  'heredity 
impulse,'  to  take  a  given  course  of  development,  which 
will  in  a  measure  recapitulate  the  course  of  organic  devel- 
opment antecedent  to  this  particular  stage ;  and  also  as  a 
tendency  of  the  individual  creature  to  acquire  actions  of 
particular  kinds  with  great  facility,  by  reason  of  these 
native  organic  pathways  of  discharge.  The  most  marked 
instances  of  this  latter  are  the  instincts  ;  but  the  tendency 
is  equally  present  to  the  performance  of  functions  not  so 
completely  handed  over  to  nervous  habit,  but  still  requir- 
ing consciousness  and  somewhat  gradual  learning  ;  such 
as  speech,  walking,  standing,  thumb-grasping,  etc. 

Now  with  reference  to  the  influence  of  these  innate 
tendencies,  it  is  easy  to  see  that  everything  which  the 
organism  does  zvill  tend  to  conform  itself  if  possible  to 
them.  New  processes  of  stimulation  will  set  their  dis- 
charges toward  these  old  channels.  Old  ways  of  action 
will  try  to  serve  as  adequate  responses  to  new  sets  of  con- 
ditions. To  deny  this  is  to  say  that  the  organism  can 
simply  create  new  matter  for  itself  at  the  call  of  any 
stimulus  from  without.  If  the  organism  is  one,  then  any 
new  process  must  fight  for  its  life,  especially  for  its  life  of 
action.  For  a  genetic  view  requires  us  to  hold  that  there 
is  no  part  of  an  organism,  no  muscles,  no  pathways,  but 
those  which  have  arisen  for  a  use;  so  if  a  new  thing  is  to 
be  learned,  it  must  resist  the  old  ways  of  action  and  super- 
cede the  old  ways  of  use,  by  overcoming  the  impulse 
which  already  urges  the  organism  on,  or  it  must  itself 
accept  and  subsidize  the  old  channels  and  muscles,  and 
conform,  as  far  as  may  be,  to  their  previous  habits  of 
action. 

This  latter  is  the  dominating  result.     All  new  experi- 


Habitual  Motor  Attitudes.  257 

ences  tend  to  lapse  into  old  ones,  to  be  in  their  effects  on 
the  organism  identical  with  them,  to  have  their  differences 
rubbed  off,  and  so  to  discharge  through  the  pathways  used 
by  the  old  ones. 

This  is  a  necessary  result  of  any  adequate  view  of  the 
rise  of  neurological  habits ;  and  we  will  see  below  that 
psychology  directly  and  imperatively  confirms  it.  The 
principle  of  Assimilation,  treated  in  a  later  connection, ^  is 
a  direct  reflection  in  consciousness  of  this  aspect  of  the 
law  of  habit.  And  this  is  only  to  say,  as  Darwin  said,  that 
we  ought  to  find,  in  certain  states  of  mind,  attitudes  struck 
which  have  arisen,  not  for  use  in  this  condition  of  mind, 
but  in  conditions  of  mind  which  feel  like  it  in  any  respect. 
But  the  two  processes  do  not  discharge  the  same  way 
because  they  feel  alike  ;  on  the  contrary,  their  feeling  alike 
is  the  sense  that  their  discharge  is  the  same  way.  The 
attitudes  are  useful  in  connection  with  the  earlier  stimula- 
tions, and  for  their  sakes  they  arose ;  but  they  are  also 
used  by  these  other  central  processes  which  thus  come 
to  be  'analogous  feeling  stimuli*  for  consciousness.  So 
a  great  mass  of  apparently  useless  processes  fall  after  all 
under  the  law  of  'serviceable  habits.* 

But  we  have  not  yet  got  all  the  light  we  may  —  and  it 
turns  out  to  be  psychological  light  in  the  sequel — from 
the  consideration  of  these  processes  of  compounding  in 
the  nervous  organism.  There  is  another  great  way  of 
looking  at  the  facts.  The  use  of  a  given  system  of  path- 
ways and  muscles  for  the  discharge  of  certain  processes 
which  are  different  from  those  for  which  the  pathways  and 
muscles  originally  arose, — this  amounts,  it  is  evident,  to  a 
great  series  of  possible  substitutions  of  processes  one  for 
1  Below,  Chap.  X.,  §  3. 

s 


258  Motor  Attitudes  and  Expressions. 

anotJicr  in  the  chain  of  events  which  a  given  issue  of 
movement  represents.  Suppose,  in  accordance  with  the 
principle  of  *  analogous  feeling  stimuli,'  I  make  a  wry  face 
at  my  physician,  because  the  sight  of  him  makes  me  feel 
in  a  measure  as  I  did  when  I  took  his  bitter  medicines. 
Here  is  the  substitution  of  a  visual  stimulus  for  one  of 
taste;  to  an  outsider,  it  would  be  inexplicable  that  I  should 
so  '  express '  myself  in  reference  to  this  man.  As  a  fact, 
emotional  attitudes  actually  found  in  man  and  animals 
show  cases  of  connection  between  the  stimulus  and  its  dis- 
charge just  as  remote  as  this,  and  equally  unintelligible, 
until  we  come  to  see  that  by  the  usurpation  of  old  habits 
of  movement,  a  new  experience  gets  permanently  substi- 
tuted for  an  old  one,  in  the  economy  of  the  organism's 
growth,  and  so  the  conditions  of  the  original  rise  and  form 
of  utility  of  the  attitude  in  question  is  hopelessly  obscured. 
The  evident  outcome  of  these  facts  of  substitution  is, 
therefore,  an  exaggerated  difficulty  in  telling  how  a  par- 
ticular attitude  or  series  of  organic  changes,  found  asso- 
ciated with  an  emotion,  actually  arose  ;  for  not  only  may 
one  substitution  have  been  made  in  the  course  of  race  his- 
tory, but  many  may  have  been  made.  This  is  shown  in 
the  rise  of  the  '  short-cuts  '  described  in  my  earlier  discus- 
sion of  the  theory  of  Recapitulation.^  The  development 
of  one  process  or  function  may  be  so  necessary,  and  its 
substitution  for  another,  and  its  usurpation  of  the  discharge 
processes  of  that  other,  so  complete,  that  the  other  may 
quite  disappear,  or  be  so  overlaid  with  newer  superseding 
functions  as  to  be  a  mere  rudiment,  an  apparently  useless 
appendage  to  the  organism's  life.  But  the  fact  that  we 
can  thus  account  for  such  cases,  on  the  theory  of  service- 

1  Above,  Chap.  I.,  §§  3,  4. 


Habitual  Motor  Attitudes.  259 

able  habits,  is  itself  a  sufficient  reason  for  doing  so.  For 
it  thus  brings  the  whole  life  of  organic  reaction  under  the 
one  principle  of  development. 

This  has  also  a  very  extraordinary  application  to  the 
facts  of  consciousness.  I  shall  show  in  a  later  chapter 
that  it  is  this  principle  of  organic  substitution  that  lies  at 
the  basis  of  memory,  and  gives  us  an  adequate  genetic 
theory  of  the  function  of  representation  as  a  whole.  And 
further,  and  still  more  surprising,  it  enables  us  to  see  that 
it  is  by  the  'circular'  or  imitative  form  of  reaction,  that 
the  higher  motor  functions  have  had  their  rise.  For  in 
cases  where  man,  animal,  or  animalcule,  acts  in  a  way 
which  does  not  seem  to  be  imitative,  —  does  not  seem  to 
have  as  its  objective  point  the  maintenance  or  reproduc- 
tion of  a  particular  kind  of  stimulation,  or  '  copy,'  —  in 
all  these  cases,  the  principle  of  substitution  comes  in  to 
remove  the  difficulty.  We  find  that  in  these  cases  the 
original  discharge  processes  of  a  reaction  which  was  dis- 
tinctly imitative,  which  did  arise  as  a  special  adaptation 
to  a  particular  sort  of  stimulation,  have  been  usurped 
by  a  substitute  stimulus,  image,  sensation,  etc.,  and  so 
completely,  that  the  original  stimulation,  image,  sensa- 
tion, etc.,  which  really  effected  and  accounted  for  these 
processes  in  accordance  with  the  law  of  utility,  has  been 
utterly  blotted  out.  The  case  is  argued  later  in  some 
detail  under  the  caption  *  principle  of  lapsed  links,'  ^  so  I 
need  only  say  here  that  this  idea  of  '  analogous  feeling 
stimuli,'  tacked  on  by  Darwin,  merely,  to  the  end  of  the 
formula  for  associated  habit,  becomes,  in  the  higher  reaches 
of  psychological  development,  an  explaining  agent  of  the 
widest  application. 

^  Below,  Chap.  IX.,  §  3,  and  Chap.  X.,  §  2. 


26o  Motor  Attitudes  and  Expressions, 

One  farther  point  must  be  noted.  We  are  asked  how- 
it  is  that  there  are  certain  kinds  of  activities  which  are 
not  only  expressive  of  mental  states,  but  are  actually  seized 
upon  and  developed  by  man  for  just  the  purpose,  and  no 
other,  of  expressing  himself  to  others,  —  speech,  gesture, 
song,  music,  fine  art,  etc.  These  certainly  seem  to  make 
simple  expression  an  end  in  itself,  and  their  importance  is 
so  great  that  society  could  not  exist  without  these  means 
of  inter-communication  between  man  and  man.  What,  it 
may  be  asked,  was  the  original  utility  of  such  actions 
apart  from  the  conveying  of  a  meaning  from  one  being  to 
another  ? 

It  is  easy  to  see,  however,  that  true  as  this  is,  —  and 
its  importance  is  fundamental  to  social  psychology,^ —  it 
makes  no  exception  to  the  law  of  utility.  For,  of  course, 
the  conjoint  action,  the  gregarious  life,  the  conveying  of 
meanings  from  one  individual  to  another,  is  an  acquire- 
ment itself  profoundly  useful  to  the  individual  and  to  the 
race.  So  to  say  that  certain  movements  originally  acci- 
dental, or  diffuse,  or  hedonic  —  these  last  mainly,  it  seems 
—  did  convey  meanings  to  other  onlookers,  is  only  to 
say  that  these  movements  themselves  are  adjustments  for 
utility,  as  truly  as  are  the  movements,  for  example,  which 
secure  food.  And  that  these  expressive  actions  are 
selected,  and  these  expressing  beings,  is  only  a  result  of 
serviceable  associated  habit.  The  evolution  of  hand- 
writing, as  an  engine  of  expression,  from  the  rude  draw- 
ing of  objects,  shows  that  the  first  tracings  were  fitted 
to  perform  just  this  use,  and  did  so.  They  therefore  sur- 
vived, and  were  refined  upon  for  this  very  utility. 

In  short,  expression  is  itself  an  utility.     '  Expression  for 

1  See  my  proposed  volume  of '  Interpretations.' 


Habitual  Motor  Attitudes.  261 

expression's  sake,'  the  formula  which  we  so  often  hear,  is 
nonsense.  What  is  really  meant  by  it  is  conscious  expres- 
sion, known  to  be  expression,  and  ratified  for  the  sake  of 
social  utilities. 

A  further  factor  in  the  ontogenetic  acquirement  of  emo- 
tional attitudes  and  expressive  functions  is  at  once  so  im- 
portant and  so  obscure  that  I  only  mention  it  here  ;  it  has 
detailed  treatment  later  on.  I  refer  to  the  fact  mentioned 
also  by  Darwin,  and  discussed  by  Romanes,  Mantagazza, 
and  others,  that  the  young  of  animals,  and  especially  young 
children,  get  most  of  these  functions  by  direct  conscious 
imitation  of  their  elders.  The  child  first  really  learns  what 
certain  emotions  are,  by  imitating  the  indications  of  them 
which  it  sees  in  the  faces  of  older  persons.  We  will  see 
later  that  this  tendency  to  imitate  is  really  the  higher 
conscious  form  of  the  very  way  of  getting  all  useful  actions 
which  we  have  seen  in  lower  organisms,  the  '  circular  pro- 
cess '  way ;  and  so  instead  of  presenting  a  new  class  of 
facts,  it  only  serves  to  carry  the  principle  of  '  circular 
reaction '  into  the  higher  reaches  of  conscious  function. 
In  conscious  imitation  we  have  an  instinct  in  which  the 
very  method  of  adaptation  has  been  embodied,  has  be- 
come a  habit.  After  knowledge  arises,  and  voluntary 
selection,  the  first  thing  necessary  to  the  individual  in 
order  to  direct  his  life  is  to  find  out  about  all  possible 
experiences  ;  so  the  child  imitates  everything,  thus  secur- 
ing in  its  own  feeling,  by  this  its  own  act  of  laying  hold 
on  experiences,  the  way  of  judging  of  things  —  and  the 
material  of  its  judgments  —  as  to  their  relative  value  for 
further  cultivation,  and  their  relative  difficulty  in  pursuit.^ 

1  This  is  developed  below  in  Chap.  XL,  §  3  (which,  however,  cannot 
well  be  read  without  the  earlier  sections  on  Imitation)  ;  its  social  and  educa- 
tional '  Interpretation  '  is  reserved  Tor  my  later  volume. 


262  Motor  Attitudes  and  Expressions. 

That  great  theatre  of  experience,  that  splendid  natural 
kindergarten,  the  spontaneous  games  of  children  and  ani- 
mals, plays  of  all  kinds,  is  a  practice  ground  in  imitative 
semblances  of  what  is  afterwards  life's  serious  business  ; 
and  the  young  learn  how  such  things  feel  by  these  imita- 
tions of  them,  and  so  get  prepared  for  their  actual  onset  in 
later  life. 

Looking  back  now  upon  all  the  facts  which  the  various 
'principles,'  so  called,  are  used  to  explain,  we  find  a  very 
mixed  condition  of  things  covered  by  the  usual  phrase 
'expression  of  the  emotions.'  There  are  utility  elements 
whose  rise  by  adaptation  is  plain  ;  utterly  refractory  convul- 
sive elements,  whose  lawlessness  to  all  but  mere  discharge 
is  evident ;  partially  useful  elements  which  had  their  origin 
in  uses  which  they  no  longer  serve  ;  elements  whose  use- 
fulness is  clearly  outlived  and  which  are  falling  rapidly  into 
decay  —  'rudimentary  organs,'  as  the  biologists  are  wont 
to  say,  — and  various  groups  of  confusions  evidently  due  to 
the  grinding,  erosion,  rivalry,  of  developmental  processes 
among  themselves.  And  with  all  this,  we  find  masses  of 
associated  organic  movements — in  the  bowels  and  vaso- 
motor system,  with  bizarre  and  uncouth  sensations,  such 
as  flesh-creeping,  shivering,  back-crawling,  fainting,  etc.  — 
shifted  and  shunted  from  one  connection  to  another,  till 
they  seem  to  have  no  reason  nor  measure  in  their  place 
and  function.  But  the  unreason  of  it  all  is  itself  reason- 
able, as  we  now  see ;  and  we  have  no  right  to  complain  at 
results  which  we  have  reason  for  expecting  from  the  carry- 
ing out  of  our  own  principles. 


CHAPTER    IX. 

Organic  Imitation. 
§  I.    The  General  Question. 

We  may  now  proceed  to  examine  more  carefully  the 
type  of  reaction  in  which  we  have  found  both  Habit  and 
Accommodation  to  have  their  rise. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  we  found  the  life  process 
issuing  in  a  great  twofold  adaptation,  —  expansions  and 
contractions,  —  and  we  saw  that  the  former  represent  wax- 
ing vital  processes.  Then  we  went  on  to  say  that  all 
special  adaptations  are  secured  by  the  new  hold  upon 
beneficial  stimulations  reached  by  these  expansive,  out- 
reaching,  movements.  Thus  a  *  circular '  activity  is  found 
in  operation ;  life  processes  issuing  in  increased  move- 
ments, by  which  in  turn  the  stimulations  to  the  life  pro- 
cesses are  kept  in  action.  It  will  also  be  remembered  that 
we  found  it  necessary  to  postpone  to  the  present  chapter 
the  further  consideration  of  this  type  of  activity. 

In  our  consideration  of  suggestion  we  discovered  an 
activity  of  a  similar  kind  also,  a  *  circular '  activity.  We 
found  it  well  to  describe  the  child's  hnitations  in  terms  of 
very  similar  import,  and  it  has  been  intimated  that,  since 
consciousness,  of  which  imitation  is  generally  considered  a 
characteristic,  is  probably  never  absent  from  living  organ- 

263 


264  Organic  Imitation. 

isms,  possibly  these  two  cases  of  '  circular '  activity  might 
turn  out  to  be  one  and  the  same  thing. 

Let  us  now  examine  this  circular  type  of  reaction  some- 
what more  closely,  finding  our  clue  w^ithout  more  ado  in 
the  analogy  between  the  kind  of  nervous  reaction  which 
we  have  already  seen  to  fulfil  the  conditions  required  by 
the  preceding  theory  of  development,  and  the  mental 
function  called  Imitative  Suggestion} 

This  has  the  added  advantage  that  it  throws  our  fur- 
ther investigations  on  the  side  of  psychology,  and  we 
have  the  problem  of  accounting  for  mental  development^ 
although  we  shall  consider  it  throughout  as  a  new  stage 
in  the  general  problem  already  set  for  solution  in  the 
treatment  of  biological  development. 

Imitation  is  a  matter  of  such  familiarity  to  us  all  that 
it  goes  usually  unattended  to :  so  much  so  that  professed 
psychologists  have  left  it  largely  undiscussed.  Whether 
it  be  one  of  the  more  ultimate  facts  or  not,  we  now  seem 
to  have  some  evidence  that  it  has  never  had  its  due  in 
psychological  theory.  If  we  shall  be  able  to  trace  its 
influence  in  the  developed  mind,  even  that  will  not  be 
without  its  reward  ;  but  it  may  be  possible  that  the  law  of 
the  organic  processes  can  be  shown  to  be  capable  of  an 
interpretation  similar  to  that  of  the  mental. 

We  may  make  it  a  part  of  our  assumption  at  the  start  — 
what  I  have  endeavoured  to  prove  above  —  that  an  imita- 
tion is  an  ordinary  sensori-motor  reaction  which  finds  its 
differentia  in  the  single  fact  that  it  imitates :  that  is,  its 
peculiarity  is  found  in  the  locus  of  its  muscular  discharge. 
It  is  what  I  have  called  a  '  circular  activity '  on  the  bodily 

1  See  above,  Chap.  VI.,  §  4,  and  Chap.  VII.,  §§  1-2. 


The  General  Qiiestioji.  265 

side — brain-state  due  to  stimulating  conditions,  muscular 
reaction  which  reproduces  or  retains  the  stimulating  con- 
ditions, same  brain-state  again  due  to  same  stimulating 
conditions,  and  so  on.  The  questions  to  be  asked  now  are 
these  :  Where  in  our  psycho-physical  theory  do  we  find 
place  for  this  peculiar  '  circular '  order  of  reaction ;  what 
is  its  value  in  consciousness  and  in  mental  development, 
and  how  does  it  itself  arise  and  come  to  occupy  the  place 
it  does  ? 

It  may  be  well  to  repeat  that  we  might  expect  to  find 
imitations  —  using  the  word  for  the  present  in  this  broad 
organic  sense  —  wherever  there  is  any  degree  of  inter- 
action between  a  living  organism  and  the  external  world. 
The  effect  of  imitation,  it  is  clear,  is  to  make  the  brain 
a  *  repeating  organ,'  i.e.,  to  secure  the  repetitions  which 
on  all  biological  theories  the  organism  must  have,  if  it  is 
to  develop.  The  muscular  system  is,  as  Eimer  and  others 
show,  the  expression  and  evidence  of  this  fact.  The 
place  of  imitation  in  life  development  is,  therefore,  theo- 
retically solvable  in  two  ways  :  (i)  by  an  examination 
of  living  creatures  for  actual  imitations,  and  (2)  by  the 
deduction  of  this  function  from  the  theory  of  repetition 
in  neurology  and  psychology  —  this  latter  provided  we 
find  that  Nature  does  not  herself  present  an  environment 
sufficiently  constant  to  give  enough  repetitions  to  supply 
the  demands  of  neurology  and  psychology.  If  this  last 
condition  be  unfulfilled  —  that  is,  if  Nature  do  actually 
repeat  herself  through  her  stimulating  agencies,  light, 
sound,  etc.,  sufficiently  often  and  with  sufficient  regularity 
to  secure  nervous  and  mental  development  —  then  imita- 
tion may  be  a  side  phenomenon,  an  incident  merely.  In 
that  case  the  old  biological  theory,  which  uses  habit  alone 


266  Oro^anic  Imitation 


^> 


with  lucky  chance,  and  takes  no  account  of  the  nervous 
process  of  pleasure  and  pain,  or  the  function  of  conscious- 
ness, in  securing  accommodations,  remains  available.  But 
I  have  already  criticised  that  view. 

Without  taking  up  these  questions  again,  I  wish,  while 
citing  incidentally  cases  of  the  occurrence  of  imitation,  to 
show  the  importance  of  repetitions  and  of  the  imitative 
way  of  securing  repetitions,  in  the  progress  of  mind,  and 
thus  to  supply  further  support  to  what  I  may  call  the 
'psychological  theory  of  development'  outlined  in  the 
earlier  pages. 

If  it  be  true,  at  the  outset,  that  organic  development 
proceeds  by  reactions,  and  if  there  be  the  two  kinds  of 
reaction  usually  distinguished,  i.e.,  those  which  involve 
consciousness  as  a  necessary  factor  and  those  which  do 
not,  then  the  first  question  comes  :  In  which  of  these 
categories  do  imitative  reactions  fall .?  Evidently  in  large 
measure  in  the  category  of  consciousness ;  the  child  is 
usually  conscious  of  what  he  imitates.  If  we  further  dis- 
tinguish this  category  in  as  far  as  it  marks  the  area  of 
conscious  life  which  is  '  plum  up,'  so  to  speak,  against  the 
environment  —  directly  amenable  to  external  stimulation 
—  by  the  word  'suggestion,'  we  have  thus  marked  off  the 
most  evident  surface  features  of  imitation.  Imitation  is 
then,  so  far,  an  instance  of  'suggestive  reaction'  —  another 
phrase  now  sufficiently  well  defined.^  And  this  is  the 
most  evident  meaning  of  the  term  '  imitation '  in  popular 
and  strictly  psychological  usage.  We  shall  therefore 
proceed  out  from  this  more  popular  conception. 

Now  let  us  look  more  closely  at  this  kind  of  conscious- 
ness,  and   find    its   analogies.     A   mocking-bird,   we    say, 

1  See  above,  Chap.  VI. 


The  General  Question.  267 

imitates  a  sparrow,  a  beaver  imitates  an  architect,  a  child 
imitates  his  nurse,  a  man  imitates  his  rector.  CaUing  the 
idea  of  the  result  which  the  imitator  is  supposed  to  have 
some  dim  or  clear  consciousness  of,  the  'copy,'  we  find 
that  we  are  forced  to  consider  this  '  consciousness  of  the 
copy '  very  different  in  these  several  cases.  The  copy 
is  clearly  defined,  certainly,  in  the  child's  mind  when  he 
imitates  a  movement ;  and  also  in  the  man's  mind,  although 
it  is  very  much  more  complex  and  associative,  when  he 
imitates  his  rector.  But  we  have  a  very  different  state  of 
consciousness  in  the  parrot  or  mocking-bird,  and  this  is 
true  even  more  strikingly  in  the  case  of  the  beaver.  In- 
deed, these  four  cases  are  typical  divisions  in  the  psychology 
of  action,  i.e.,  volition  (the  man),  suggestion  (the  infant), 
reflex  action  (the  mocking-bird),  instinct  (the  beaver). 
Yet  suppose  I  make  any  one  of  four  remarks  to  an  ordi- 
nary man  on  the  street:  'the  beaver's  dam  is  a  good  imi- 
tation,' or  'the  mocking-bird's  song  is  a  good  imitation,' 
or  'the  child's  movement  is  a  good  imitation,'  or  'the 
man's  conduct  is  a  good  imitation  '  —  this  working  man 
would  understand  me  and  accept  the  opinion  with  no 
further  explanation  on  my  part  and  no  further  questioning 
on  his  part. 

We  see,  therefore,  that  even  in  popular  language,  these 
so-called  kinds  of  action  have  something  in  common,  and 
that  the  word  '  imitation  '  is  not  greatly  strained  in  ex- 
pressing this  common  element.  There  is  in  all  the  in- 
stances some  kind  of  constructive  idea,  a  '  copy,'  in  more 
or  less  conscious  clearness,  which  calls  the  action  out,  and 
which  it  is  the  business  of  the  imitator  to  reinstate  or 
bring  about  somehow  for  himself.  Now,  this  is  just  what 
I  wish  to  inquire  into  :  the  nature  and  significance  of  this 


268  Organic  Imitation. 

*  copy ; '  aiming,  if  possible,  to  show  how  all  the  forms  of 
action  which  show  this  common  element  could  have 
arisen,  and  what  principles  of  development  they  imply. 


§  2.    The  Neurological  Que s Hon. 

On  the  physiological  side,  the  simple  imitations  of  child- 
hood present  the  purest  type.  And  the  law  of  repetition 
in  neurology  must  be  brought  in,  in  some  way,  to  supply 
its  nervous  basis.  No  one  probably  will  be  disposed  to 
deny  this.  We  find  it  possible,  also,  just  as  soon  as  we 
bring  to  mind  the  action  of  accommodation  and  habit,  no 
matter  what  theory  we  adopt  of  their  mechanism,  to  show 
that  the  element  common  to  the  child's  imitations,  and  all 
the  other  instances  mentioned,  is  very  plain.  Current 
theories  agree  that  voluntary  reactions  repeated  tend  to 
become  organic  as  direct  suggestions ;  that  the  nervous 
process  becomes  smooth  through  habit;  that  suggestions 
repeated  tend  to  become  still  more  independent  of  con- 
sciousness as  secondary  automatic  and  reflex  reactions,  by 
the  same  principle;  that  reflex  reactions,  when  repeated, 
co-ordinated,  and  inherited,  or  selected  from  congenital 
variations,  become  instincts.  All  this  is  simply  and  plainly 
habit ;  and  habit  is  due  to  repetition,  no  matter,  again, 
how  it  is  secured. 

But  it  is  just  as  clear  to  current  thought  that  the  whole 
process  works  also  the  other  way.  Instincts  are  con- 
stantly being  snubbed,  contradicted,  disused,  modified, 
until  all  that  is  left  is  an  instinctive  torso,  a  fragment,  a 
tendency  merely,  and  this  we  call,  in  psychology,  impulse ; 
and  these  impulses,  when  recognized,  ratified,  indulged, 
work  up  into  volitions  again.      Now,  all  this  reverse  process 


The  Ncicrological  Qucstioi.  269 

is  due  to  the  principle  and  fact  of  accommodation,  so 
familiar  to  us  in  view  of  our  earlier  discussions.  And 
here,  again,  we  may  speak  only  of  the  facts,  leaving  out  of 
account  all  the  theory  of  how  it  is  done. 

All  this  so  far  is  so  evident  to  current  thought,  that  only 
details  are  now  discussed  in  the  books.  It  only  remains, 
therefore,  to  ask  whether  the  self-sustaining  type  of  ner- 
vous action,  that  which  is  actually  present  in  the  child's 
conscious  imitation,  —  i.e.,  eye-stimulus,  then  central  pro- 
cess, then  movement  of  the  child's  own  member,  which 
itself  reinstates  the  same  eye-stimulus  —  whether  this  is 
present  from  the  first  stages  of  evolution.  If  so,  then 
habit  and  accommodation  as  depicted  in  the  earlier  chap- 
ter will  do  the  work  by  its  aid ;  and  psychological  develop- 
ment can  be  read  as  a  chapter  of  biological  evolution.  But 
if  not,  then  when  in  the  organic  series  did  conscious  imita- 
tion arise,  and  why  }  For  as  sure  as  it  is  that  conscious- 
ness gives  us  imitation  at  all,  so  sure  is  it  that  the  nervous 
system  performs,  without  any  violation  of  its  ordinary  meth- 
ods, the  circular  process  by  which  the  imitation  goes  on. 

This  question,  I  insist  again,  as  I  have  above,  is  an 
urgent  one,  and  admits  of  only  two  possible  answers : 
either  the  neurological  analogue  of  imitation  was  present 
from  the  first,  and  in  conscious  imitation  becomes  explicit 
as  mental  accommodation,  or  it  has  come  in  somewhere  in 
the  biological  series.  I  have  already  said  that  the  second 
alternative  might  be  true,  allowing  a  certain  amount  of 
development  under  constant  conditions  before  the  rise  of 
special  differentiated  movements  of  expansion  and  contrac- 
tion —  as  much  development  as  is  represented  by  simple 
habit  in  very  low  organisms  whose  life  is  a  round  of  recur- 
ring stimulations  and  reactions. 


270  Organic  Imitation. 

But  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  reactions  which  represent 
habit  merely  could  get  much  complexity.  In  a  constant 
environment  they  would  soon  exhaust  the  compounding  of 
results  due  to  variety  of  stimulations.  And  if  the  environ- 
ment changed,  this  compounding  of  habits  would  only 
make  the  organism  more  rigid  and  less  able  to  adapt  itself. 
The  only  solution  of  this  point  —  simply  slurred  or  not 
seen  by  most  biologists  —  is  that  adopted  by  Spencer  in 
his  law  of  heightened  nervous  discharge ;  but  this  only 
gave  a  new  factor,  which  served  historically  to  bring  in 
the  nervous  process  of  pleasure  and  pain,  and  so  to  lead 
to  the  other  alternative  given  above.  We  have  instances 
of  what  mere  habit  will  do,  in  higher  organisms,  in  the 
endless  repetitions  of  the  same  sounds  by  the  weak-minded, 
by  children,  and  by  parrots  —  continued  muscular  tension 
kept  up  by  circular  discharge  until  nervous  exhaustion 
ensues.  This  is  characteristic  of  the  cataleptic  condition 
also,  as  I  shall  have  occasion  to  remark  below  in  speaking 
of  aboidia.  Such  persons  do  not  develop  or  grow.  They 
are  like  wound-up  mechanical  devices,  as  far  as  a  living 
organism  can  in  any  case  be  compared  with  such  a  self- 
repeating  mechanical  device  (say  a  swinging  pendulum), 
which  never  gets  exhausted  nor  grows. 

We  should  expect  accordingly  to  find  evidence  of  the 
imitative,  i.e.,  self-sustaining,  type  of  reaction  in  very 
early  organisms. 

There  is,  in  fact,  a  distinct  trend  in  recent  biological 
thought  directly  toward  a  construction  of  this  kind.  In- 
deed, this  view  of  nervous  adaptation  is  in  line,  I  think, 
with  the  most  important  and  thorough  contributions  lately 
made  to  the  theory  of  organic  movement.  Two  recent 
investigators   have   summed   up   evidence  which  supplies. 


The  N^ euro  logical  Qticstioii.  271 

in  great  part,  the  basis  long  desiderated  for  a  theory 
of  muscular  action  and  development.  Eimer^  has  stated 
the  facts  which  make  it  probable  that  all  the  '*  morpho- 
logical properties  of  muscle  are  the  result  of  functional 
activity."  On  his  view  contraction  waves  leave  markings 
which  account  for  both  muscle-fibres  and  striation.  The 
series  of  stages  in  the  development  of  voluntary  muscle 
which  biological  science  is  now  cognizant  of  is  very  strik- 
ing. That  there  are  no  anatomical  divisions  corresponding 
to  the  striation  of  muscle  is  shown  by  recent  observations. 
It  remains,  then,  only  to  find  a  physiological  conception  of 
contraction  which,  while  applicable  primarily  to  unicellular 
creatures,  provides  for  the  development  of  the  organism 
and  the  differentiation  of  its  parts  by  repetition  of  function 
with  progressive  adaptation.  Natural  history  requires,  in 
the  words  of  Engelmann,  that  "  every  attempt  to  explain 
the  mechanism  of  protoplasmic  movement  must  extend  to 
all  the  other  phenomena  of  contractility."  ^ 

This  requirement  a  recent  theory  of  contractility,  that 
of  Max  Verworn,  seems  to  me,  in  its  type^  to  go  far  toward 
supplying,  accordant  as  it  is  with  the  detailed  histological 
results  of  Kiihne,  Schultz,  Engelmann,  and  others.  The 
outcome  of  Verworn's  work  is  a  chemical  theory  of  con- 
tractility which  rests  upon  two  known  cases  of  chemical 
action.     Kiihne  has  proved  that  the  oxygen  of  the  air  has 

1  Zeitschrift  fiir  ivissen.  Zoologie,  LIIL,  suppl.  Bd.,  p.  67.  See  also  many 
of  the  detailed  positions  of  Eimer's  great  work,  Organic  Evolution. 

2  Quoted  by  Soury,  Revue  Philosophique,  July,  1893,  P-  45- 

^  Die  Bewegung  der  lebendigen  Suhstanz  (Jena,  1892).  Verworn's  work 
is  well  summarized  by  Soury  (see  last  note).  Cf.  Burdon  Sanderson's  remarks 
on  '  Chemiotaxis '  in  Nature,  Sept,  14,  1893,  p.  471.  ^  ^^X  '  ^"^  ^'^  tyP^»' 
since  the  particular  chemical  mode  of  stimulation  which  Verworn  makes 
exclusively  the  basis  of  life  may  not  be,  and  probably  is  not,  the  only  kind  of 
stimulus  to  which  the  organism  effects  the  same  typical  kind  of  circular 
reaction. 


272  Organic  Imitation. 

chemical  affinity  for  the  outer  layer  of  particles  of  a  proto- 
plasmic mass.  The  elements  set  free  by  this  union  find 
themselves  impelled  toward  the  centre  by  their  affinity  for 
the  nuclear  elements.  This  new  synthesis  releases  elements 
which  again  move  outward  toward  the  oxygen  at  the  sur- 
face.^ Thus  there  are  two  contrary  movements :  away  from 
the  nucleus,  or  expansion,  and  toward  the  nucleus,  or  con- 
traction. Considering  the  oxygen  action  as  stimulus,  we 
have  thus  a  reaction  which  keeps  up  the  action  of  its  own 
stimulus,  and  thus  perpetuates  itself,  giving  just  the  type 
of  reaction  which  my  theory,  outlined  above,  calls  '  imita- 
tion.' Verworn  pushes  the  claim  of  this  type  of  vital 
action  right  up  through  all  the  forms  of  muscular  action  — 
just  as  Eimer  finds  only  the  one  type  of  function  necessary, 
with  repetition,  to  account  for  all  the  morphological  varia- 
tions. I  am  certainly,  therefore,  in  touch  with  biological 
authorities  in  claiming  that  this  type  of  reaction  is  essential 
to  neurological  development ;  and  especially  so  when  we 
come  to  see,  in  what  follows,  that  the  progress  of  con- 
sciousness can  be  accounted  for  in  stages  corresponding, 
in  its  great  features,  with  the  stages  of  differentiation 
required  by  the  physiological  and  anatomical  theories. 

Further,  recent  researches  on  the  behaviour  of  unicellu- 
lar organisms  and  of  plants  show  the  same  kind  of  so-called 
selective  or  *  nervous  property,'  with  antithetic  adaptations 
of  attraction  and  repulsion.  These  creatures  develop  not 
by  remaining  still  and  awaiting  the  accidental  repetition  of 
stimulations  by  storming  or  assault.  On  the  contrary, 
they  do  exactly  what  we  have  long  thought  it  the  exclusive 
right  of  higher  conscious  creatures  to  do ;  they  go  after, 

1  The  exhaustion  of  the  nucleus  by  stimulation  is  shown  by  the  work  of 
Hodge,  Changes  due  to  Functional  Activity  of  N'ef-ve  Cells  (Boston,  1893). 


The  Neurological  Qjiestion,  273 

or  shrink  from,  a  stimulating  influence,  according  as  its 
former  impression  has  been  beneficial  or  damaging.  In 
other  words,  they  perform  reactions  of  the  stimulus- 
maintaining,  or  imitative,  type.  Binct  ^  draws  the  conclusion 
that  protozoa  have  memory,  choice,  volition;  that  is,  as  I 
should  prefer  to  say,  they  behave  as  though  they  had. 
Bunge,  in  his  lectures  on  physiological  chemistry,  after 
describing  the  actions  of  certain  '  apparently  quite  struc- 
tureless '  creatures,  Vainpyrella  and  Colpodcila,  says  :  "  The 
behaviour  of  these  monads  in  their  search  after  food,  and 
their  method  of  absorbing  it,  is  so  remarkable,  that  one 
can  hardly  avoid  the  conclusion  that  the  acts  are  those  of 
conscious  beings."  "  Later  on,"  says  a  writer  in  the  British 
Medical  Journal^  *'  he  gives  the  still  more  remarkable  case 
of  the  orcellae.  Whenever  an  attempt  is  made  to  place  them 
in  an  inconvenient  position,  they  are  always  able  by  the 
development  of  gas  bubbles  of  appropriate  size  and  at  the 
proper  spot,  to  right  themselves  .  .  .  etc.  '  It  cannot  be 
denied,'  says  Engelmann,  'that  these  facts  point  to  psychi- 
cal processes  in  the  protoplasm.'  "  Late  researches  show- 
ing the  effect  of  lights  of  different  colours  upon  these 
elementary  creatures,  is  also  in  evidence.  They  swarm 
into  certain  lights  and  avoid  others.  Certain  bacteria 
distinguish  the  trillionth  part  of  a  milligramme  of  certain 
substances  in  solution  —  showing  lively  attraction  —  quan- 
tities which  the  tests  of  chemical  reaction  and  the  finest 
chemical  balances  fail  to  detect.  If  extract  of  meat  be  ex- 
posed near  these  creatures,  which  feed  on  it,  they  swarm 
toward  it  from  afar,  crawling  over  one  another.  But  just 
as  soon  as  a  little  poisonous  extract,  in  the  most  minute 

^  Psychic  Life  of  Micro-o7'ganisms. 
2  May  12,  1894,  p.  1027. 


2  74  Organic  h^iitation, 

quantity  conceivable,  be  added,  the  bacteria  fly  from  the 
mouth  of  the  tubes  in  haste,  with  all  the  external  signs 
of  intelligence  and  fear. 

In  regard  to  plants,  the  recent  evidence  of  their  active 
responses  to  stimulations  of  all  kinds  by  extension  and 
retraction  is  simply  remarkable.  Pfeffer  has  shown  the 
conditions  of  the  perpetual  movements  known  as  geotro- 
pism,  hydrotropism,  heliotropism  in  plants.  The  fact  of 
twining  movement  in  the  tendrils  of  various  plants  has 
been  subjected  by  this  investigator  to  delicate  tests.  He 
finds  that  the  tendrils  of  the  pea  will  twine  about  a  thread 
of  silk  which  exerts  a  pressure  of  only  the  ioo,oooth  part 
of  a  milligramme,  while  the  force  of  the  wind  and  the  rain 
or  the  constant  pressure  of  a  stream  of  mercury,  have  no 
effect  whatever.  The  tendrils  distinguish  between  liquid 
and  solid  touches.  A  wound  upon  a  plant  is  a  signal  for 
a  movement  of  protoplasm  throughout  the  entire  plant, 
and  a  migration  toward  the  damaged  part.  ''It  is,"  says 
Pfeffer,  ''just  as  if  the  plant  had  the  power  of  moving 
itself.  Its  sensibility  is  developed  to  the  highest  degree, 
and  it  reacts  to  light,  heat,  contact,  electricity,  and  chemi- 
cal influences."  ^  The  researches  of  Hegler  show  that  if 
a  weight  be  attached  to  a  growth  stem  of  a  plant,  greater 
mechanical  strength  is  developed  in  the  stem  to  withstand 
the  weight,  a  fact  analogous  to  the  fact  shown  by  Waller 
that  an  isolated  muscle  is  able  to  do  more  work  when  a 
greater  demand  is  made  upon  it  in  the  way  of  resist- 
ance.^    Growing  roots  show  enormously  increased  growth 

1  Pfeffer's  'Address  at  the  first  general  meeting  of  the  Society  of  German 
Naturalists  and  Physicians,'  at  Nuremberg.  See  Revue  Scientifique,  Dec.  9, 
1893,  ^'^d  Nature,  April  19,  1894. 

2  Brain,  XV.,  p.  388. 


The  Neurological  Questioji.  275 

power  when  resistances  are  put  in  their  way.  The  fruit 
buds  of  certain  plants  resist  the  action  of  gravity,  growing 
upward,  as  long  as  the  germinal  vescicles  are  uninjured. 
All  the  other  parts  of  the  buds  and  flower  may  be  cut 
away,  but  it  still  grows  serenely  up.  But  only  let  the 
germinal  vescicles  be  removed  —  parts  which  in  size  and 
weight  are  infinitesimally  smaller  than  these  others,  and 
the  whole  bough  sinks  toward  the  earth. 

The  theory  adopted  by  the  great  botanist  mentioned, 
Pfeffer,  in  explaining  these  phenomena,  falls  in  so  easily, 
up  to  a  certain  point,  with  those  of  Eimer  and  Verworn  al- 
ready described,  that  it  even  suggests  the  via  media  which  is 
required  by  the  doctrine  of  accommodation  through  the  law 
of  *  excess  '  expounded  in  the  foregoing  pages.  Says  Pfef- 
fer :  "  Having  a  view  to  all  the  particulars  in  the  process  of 
reaction  and  its  effects,  we  find  that  the  essential  principle 
of  all  these  phenomena  is  to  be  looked  for  in  the  produc- 
tion of  a  central  orgaiiic  response  (^Ansldsnng,  detente,  release, 
or  *  trigger-action ').  This  is  the  only  definition  which  covers 
all  the  phenomena.  .  .  .  And  it  clearly  results  from  it  that 
irritability  is  never  simply  the  result  of  the  stimuli  which 
bring  out  the  reaction  ;  these  only  serve  to  discover  the  prop- 
erties and  the  specific  agencies  of  the  organism  itself,  and 
that  the  whole  proceeding  is  due  to  the  peculiar  energy  of 
the  organism.  ...  A  simple  mechanical  action,  for  example, 
which  represents  an  equivalent  transformation  of  energy, 
does  not  constitute  an  irritation,  although  in  the  chain  of 
phenomena  due  to  irritability,  there  is  more  than  one  such 
transformation  ;  for  there  is  never  irritation  without  an 
external  or  internal  stimulant  which  sets  in  play  the  poten- 
tial energy  of  the  plant.  Here  we  are  dealing  with  phe- 
nomena   of    another    order    than    those    of    a    membrane 


276  Organic  L^titation. 

drawing  in  water  by  stretching,  or  of  a  cell  filling  itself 
by  osmose,  or  finally  of  a  branch  bending  under  a  weight." 
Further,  in  certain  kinds  of  reaction,  such  as  heliotropism, 
etc.,  Pfeffer  points  out  the  ability  of  the  organism  to 
'release'  its  energies  again  and  again  to  the  same  stimulus, 
and  so  to  keep  its  processes  a-going :  *'  However  little  the 
ensemble  of  effects  follow  the  release  automatically,  never- 
theless the  organism  may  prolong  a  reaction  once  provoked, 
or,  after  reacting,  re-establisJi  the  state  favourable  to  the  re- 
actioiiy^  Uniform  conditions,  also,  such  as  air,  tempera- 
ture, etc.,  he  holds  to  be  constant  stimulation  by  which  the 
organism  is  kept  in  a  state  of  static  or  recurrent  contrac- 
tion. Plants  continue  to  grow  in  forced  directions  some 
time  after  being  again  set  free.  "  If  the  temperature  re- 
mains constant,  the  plant  finds  itself  in  a  state  of  static 
irritation  —  a  condition  necessary  to  vital  activity.  It  is  in 
this  sense  that  certain  permanent  influences  are  general 
and  absolute  conditions  of  the  functioning  of  the  organ- 
ism." 2  This,  it  is  clear,  is  in  full  accord  with  the  theory  of 
Verworn  and  with  the  oxygen  discovery  of  Engelmann, 
and  recognizes  the  ability  of  the  lowest  organisms  to  pro- 
duce already  reactions  of  the  circular  or  imitative  type. 

The  general  theory  of  Ausldsnng,  or  'trigger-action,' 
stated  by  Pfeffer,  is  as  old,  he  says,  as  his  work  on  Phys- 
iology (1881),  and  his  Osinotische  UntersiicJuinge^i  (1877), 
and  he  also  traces  it  to  Dutrochet  (1832).  This  is  inter- 
esting, I  think,  on  account  of  its  close  approach  to  the 
heightened  nervous  energy  of  Spencer,  which  also  turns 
upon  a  storing  up  of  potential  energy.  Yet  I  am  not  able 
to  discover  that  Pfeffer  uses  this  '  excess '  storage  for  pur- 

1  Revue  Sciejitifique,  loc.  cit.,  p.  741.     Italics  mine. 

2  Pfeffer,  loc.  cit. 


The  Neurological  Ques/ion.  277 

poses  of  the  further  rtdaptation  of  the  organism :  a  Umita- 
tion  of  view  which  could  not  well  be  avoided  in  observing 
the  actions  of  plants  alone,  which  do  not,  as  animals  do, 
learn  new  adapted  movements  before  our  very  eyes.  He 
seems  simply  to  recognize  it  as  there,  to  account  for  reac- 
tions actually  observed. 

Of  course  this  class  of  facts,  w^hich  show  the  same  kind 
of  selective  reaction  in  lower  organisms  as  in  the  higher, 
where  consciousness  is  present,^  may  be  used  to  support 
a  certain  dualism  of  chemistry  and  life.  This  is  done 
among  some  later  biologists,  the  so-called  *  new  vitalists ' ; 
but  psychologists  are  becoming  so  familiar  with  the  prob- 
lems which  demand  a  reconciliation  of  form  and  content, 
and  so  willing,  for  purposes  of  science,  to  state  everything 
in  terms  of  content,  that  this  need  not  trouble  them  much. 
It  is  well  to  recognize,  however,  that  if  organic  and  mental 
accommodation  are,  as  I  am  endeavouring  to  prove,  one 
and  the  same  thing,  then  the  psychologist  may  have  more 
right  than  is  customarily  given  him  of  solving  the  dualism 
in  this  particular  case  by  interpreting  even  the  affinities  of 
chemistry  after  analogy  with  the  selective  function  of  con- 
sciousness. 

The  bearing  of  the  present  condition  of  neurological 
research  is  now  sufficiently  evident  from  the  evidence 
cited.  Whatever  else  it  shows,  this  is  clear,  that  wherever 
there  is  life  there  is  irritability,  nerv^ous  property.  Further, 
wherever  there  is  life  there  is  the  spontaneous  selection 
of    stimuli    and    the    motor   adaptations    necessary    to    it. 

1  See  an  interesting  collection  of  additional  facts  showing  the  *  nervous 
property '  in  low  organisms,  in  Orr,  Theory  of  Development  aiid  Heredity, 
Chap.  IV.  The  authors  cited  are  so  easily  accessible  that  I  do  not  quote  fur- 
ther from  very  many  available  instances. 


278  Organic  Imitation. 

Wherever  there  is  Ufe  there  is  means  of  continuing  advan- 
tageous stimulations  by  drawing  up  to  them  by  active  move- 
ment, or  by  other  actions  whose  evident  purpose  is  the  same. 
Such  a  property  could  only  have  arisen  by  the  natural 
selection  of  the  organisms  which  were  endowed  by  varia- 
tion or  otherwise  (or  by  its  abrupt  appearance  with  life 
itself),  with  a  central  physiological  process  of  a  kind  by 
which  the  contracting  energies  of  the  organism  were 
directed  into  certain  favourable  pathways  and  withheld 
from  other  pathways.  This  is  the  principle  of  '  motor 
excess '  as  worked  out  above. 

All  this  is  equally  true  of  the  reactions  which  are  con- 
sciously selective  or  inhibitory ;  the  two  great  agents  of 
such  selection  being  attention,  and  pleasure  and  pain. 
I  accordingly  claim  that  the  evidence  of  biology  is  in 
favour  of  the  conclusion  that  the  phenomena  of  '  excess ' 
in  unicellular  creatures  are,  in  some  way,  the  nervous 
analogues  to  these  conscious  functions.  How  they  are 
involved  in  pleasure  and  pain  states  of  consciousness  has 
already  been  touched  upon  in  part.  The  theory  of  the 
rise  of  attention  is  to  follow  below. 

Again,  the  adaptation  of  all  organisms  is  secured  by  their 
tendency  to  act  so  as  to  reproduce  or  maintain  stimulations 
which  are  beneficial.  In  this  way  only  can  new  reactions 
be  made  available  for  repetition,  and  so  secured  to  habit. 
But  this  reaction,  which  tends  to  secure  a  continuation 
of  its  own  stimulation,  is  exactly  the  nervous  process 
of  conscious  imitation.  Hence  we  may  say  that  all 
organic  adaptation  in  a  changing  environment  is  a  phe- 
nomenon of  biological  or-  organic  imitation} 

^  The  use  of  the  word  '  Imitation '  in  this  wide  sense  has  been  justly  criti- 
cised ;   but  I  am  at  a  loss  to  suggest  a  better  term.     Besides,  it  is  the  essence 


Physical  Basis  of  Memory  and  Association.     279 


§  3.      The  Physical  Basis  of  Memory  and  Association. 

In  the  nervous  processes  so  far  sketched  we  have,  I 
think,  the  adequate  basis  of  the  development  of  an  organ- 
ism up  to  a  certain  point.  It  is  evident  that,  in  it  all,  the 
organism  is  directly  dependent  upon  the  actual  stimulating 
agencies  of  nature.  Sensations,  perceptions,  objects,  are 
necessary  to  call  out  the  reactions  characteristic  of  it. 
And  who  would  expect  that  the  organism  could  in  any 
way  escape  this  dependence  }  Yet  we  have  already  found, 
in  the  fact  of  pleasure  and  pain  reactions,  that  the  organ- 
ism takes  active  attitudes  toward  the  sources  of  stimulation 
and  thus  in  a  measure  turns  the  events  of  its  environment 
to  better  account.  But  this  is  only  the  start :  the  marvels 
of  development  are  not  yet  well  begun ! 

Is  the  occurrence  of  any  reaction,  we  may  ask,  possi- 
ble in  the  absence  of  the  external  stimulus  which  is  suited 

of  my  contention  that  the  method  of  organic  adaptation  is  by  reactions  of  this 
identical  type  with  further  repetitions  of  them.  The  term  '  adaptation ' 
is  too  general.  '  Repetition,'  the  word  used  by  the  biologists,  is  too  narrow, 
since  it  is  only  repetitions  brought  about  in  part  by  the  organism  itself  which 
I  have  in  mind,  not  all  repetitions,  as  the  old  biological  theory  of  adaptation  is 
accustomed  to  hold.  One  of  my  correspondents  —  and  so  also  a  critic  in  the 
Academy —  thinks  Habit  covers  it  ;  but  it  is  just  my  point  that  it  does  not  cover 
it.  I  am  asking  just  how  habit  could  ever  have  started  in  an  organism  —  apart 
from  fortuitous  lucky  chances.  Of  course  this  method  of  adaptation  itself 
becomes  a  habit :  the  fact  of  imitation  by  children  show  it.  But  the  main 
function  of  the  thing  even  then  is  that  of  breaking  off  habits  by  the  new 
actions  which  the  child  learns  through  its  imitations.  If  any  one  will  suggest 
a  more  happy  term  for  the  reaction  which  is  at  once  a  new  adaptation  to 
any  sort  of  stimulation  and  the  beginning  of  a  habit  or  tendency  to  get  that 
sort  of  stimulation  again,  I  shall  hail  it  gladly.  In  the  meantime  I  use  the 
word  which  expresses  the  type  to  which  the  reaction  undoubtedly  belongs, 
even  at  the  risk  of  being  charged  with  a  desire  to  psychologize  the  facts 
of  biology;  but  I  do  not  wish,  of  course,  to  prejudice  the  argument  by  a  word 
ill-used. 


28o  Ororanic  Imitation. 


^> 


to  start  it  ?  Evidently  it  is  not  possible,  unless  there  be 
some  way  whereby  the  energies  of  the  reaction  in  question 
may  be  started  by  something  equivalent  to  the  working  of 
the  original  external  stimulus. 

We  have  seen  how  it  is  that  the  organism  goes  out  to 
find  its  stimulus  by  a  kind  of  imitation ;  we  now  find  the 
still  more  remarkable  fact  for  which  this  is  only  the  prepa- 
ration —  but  the  necessary  preparation  —  the  fact  of  mem- 
ory. Memory  is,  as  everybody  says,  on  the  bodily  side,  the 
reinstatement  in  the  nervous  centres  of  the  processes  con- 
cerned in  the  original  perception,  sensation,  etc. ;  this  much 
at  least,  whatever  else  it  may  involve.  These  processes,  of 
course,  tend  always,  when  started,  to  issue  in  movement, 
just  the  same,  no  matter  how  they  themselves  are  started. 
So  the  function  of  the  reinstatement  ^of  processes  in  the  act 
of  memory  is,  in  respect  to  the  tendency  to  action  which 
these  processes  arouse,  exactly  the  same  as  that  of  the 
processes  of  perception,  sensation,  event,  which  furnished 
the  original  of  the  memory. 

But  in  memory  the  object  or  thing  remembered  itself 
is  absent ;  yet  inasmuch  as  its  proper  reaction  in  move- 
ment comes  about  just  the  same,  we  have  a  new  stage  in 
what  is  still  our  old  friend  the  '  circular,'  the  *  stimulus- 
retaining  '  reaction.  It  gets  started  from  the  brain  centres 
to  be  sure,  but  it  aims,  just  the  same,  to  bring  about  the 
consequences  which  it  did  when  it  was  directly  started  by 
the  sense-stimulation.  It  aims,  that  is,  to  bring  the  organ- 
ism into  touch  with  the  stimulation  itself  again  if  it  be  a 
desirable  one,  or,  in  contrary  cases,  to  get  the  organism 
away  from  the  stimulation. 

This  is  accomplished  in  the  organism  by  an  arrange- 
ment whereby  a  group  of  processes,  corresponding  to  what 


Physical  Basis  of  Memory  and  Association.     281 

we  call  in  consciousness  '  copies  for  imitation,'  some  of 
them  external  as  things,  some  internal  as  memories,  con- 
spire, so  to  speak,  to  '  ring  up '  one  another.  When  an 
external  stimulus  starts  one  of  them,  that  starts  up  others 
in  the  centres,  and  all  the  reactions  which  wait  upon  these 
several  processes  tend  to  realize  themselves.  So,  many 
reactions  which,  but  for  this,  would  never  get  stimulated 
except  when  the  actual  material  stimulus  is  there,  are 
started  by  and  with  others  whose  stimuli  are  there.  And 
with  the  multiplying  of  these  secondary  or  remote  ways  of 
stimulation,  the  more  and  more  varied  and  complex  habits 
of  the  organism  come  to  be  less  and  less  dependent  upon 
the  particular  external  events  of  the  world,  and  more 
capable  of  remote  stimulation  through  senses  which  origi- 
nally did  not  constitute  their  stimulus,  but  which  by  this 
organic  'conspiracy,'  called  —  I  may  as  well  anticipate  — 
association,  come  to  do  so ;  while  the  increasing  variety  of 
the  conspiring  elements  —  constantly  recruited  from  the 
new  experiences  of  the  world  and  all  represented  by  cer- 
tain nervous  processes  —  make  up  a  large  and  ever  larger 
mass  of  connected  centres,  which  vibrate  in  delicate  coun- 
terpoise together. 

The  arrangement  thus  sketched,  therefore,  is  the  physi- 
cal basis  of  memory.  A  memory  is  a  copy  for  imitation 
taken  over  from  the  world  into  consciousness.  Memory  is 
a  device  to  nullify  distance  in  space  and  time.  It  remedies 
lack  of  immediate  connection  with  the  come-and-go  occur- 
rences of  the  world  and  makes  the  organism  to  a  degree 
independent  of  them.  Every  act  I  set  myself  to  do  is 
either  to  imitate  something  which  I  find  now  before  me, 
or  to  reproduce,  by  my  own  action,  something  whose  ele- 
ments   I    remember  —  something    whose    copy    I    get    set 


282  Organic  Imiiatio7i, 

within  me  by  a  *  ring  up  '  from  elements  which  are  events 
or  objects  in  the  world  now  before  me. 

The  neurological  theory  so  far  advanced,  with  too  great 
brevity,  is  along  the  lines  first  announced,  possibly,  by 
Tarde.^  Tarde's  theory,  which  I  find  obscure,  is  improved 
in  quotation,  and  endorsed  by  Sighele.^  It  may  be  analyzed 
into  two  factors,  i.e.,  {a)  the  securing  of  repetitions  by  imita- 
tion, a  speculative  idea  based  upon  the  mere  fact  that  ani- 
mals and  man  do  consciously  imitate  ;  and  {U)  the  theory  of 
memory,  considered  as  a  means  of  perpetuating  and  com- 
plicating the  effects  of  repetition  in  mental  development. 
This  latter  factor  I  find  only  vaguely  and  inadequately 
stated  by  Tarde.  It  is  readily  seen  that  his  view,  also, 
assumes  the  fact  of  conscious  or  semi-conscious  imitation, 
makes  of  it  an  original  endowment  or  kind  of  social  in- 
stinct, and  is,  in  so  far,  open  to  the  objections  which  may 
be  urged^  against  such  a  position  from  the  point  of  view 
of  development ;  for  one  of  the  great  problems  of  the 
theory  of  development  is  to  account  for  instincts  of  all 
kinds.  And,  moreover,  of  all  instincts  the  social  are  pos- 
sibly the  most  complex  and  the  latest.  They  involve  a 
great  measure  of  the  individual  organic  and  mental  attain- 
ment found  in  memory,  imagination,  emotion,  etc. 

The  theory  which  I  am  now  proposing,  on  the  other 
hand,  supplies  this  lack.  It  gives  a  derivation  of  imitation 
based  upon  an  analysis  of  the  imitative  reaction  itself. 
This  analysis  —  the  outcome  of  which  I  have  expressed  by 
calling  imitation  a  '  circular  reaction,'  i.e.,  one  which  tends 

'^  Les    Lois   de   P Imitation,   Chap.    III.;    published   earlier    in    an    article 
"Qu'est-ce  qu'une  Societe,"  Revue  Philosophiqiie,  XVIIL,  1884,  p.  489. 
-  La  fotile  criniinelle,  pp.  42  ff. 
^  Cf.  Bain,  Senses  and  Intellect,  3d  ed.,  pp.  413  ff.,  mentioned  again  below. 


Physical  Basis  of  Mcniory  and  Association.     283 

to  keep  up  its  own  stimulating  process  —  gives  us  a  means 
of  defining  imitation  and  fixing  the  limits  of  the  concept.^ 
The  third  and  fundamental  factor,  therefore,  which  the 
development  stated  above,  compared  with  the  earlier 
theories,  endeavours  to  supply,  is  the  theory  of  the  rise  of 
imitation  itself  from  the  simple  vital  processes  of  an  or- 
ganism through  the  occurrence,  among  '  spontaneous  life 
variations  '  of  creatures  whose  vital  discharges  are  move- 
ments of  the  '  circular '  type,  which  tend  directly  to  secure 
the  repetition  or  maintenance  of  certain  good  stimuli. 
And,  in  like  manner,  the  suppression  of  reactions  which 
are  damaging  or  useless  follows,  for  by  that  very  fact  they 
lower  the  vitality  of  the  organism  and  so  hinder  their  own 
recurrence.  This  derivation  of  imitation  secured,  we  are 
able  to  develop  independently  the  two  principles  urged 
by  Tarde  and  Sighele,  on  both  sides,  the  bodily  and  the 
mental. 

We  reach  now  a  new  stage  in  race  history.  As  habit 
goes  on  forming,  accommodation  enters  in  a  new  form. 
New  reactions  which  prove  to  be  beneficial,  have  them- 
selves to  become  matters  of  habit,  have  to  be  accommo- 
dated to  by  the  organism  as  a  whole,  have  to  be  taken  up 
into  the  network  of  conspiring  processes  which  represent 
the  sum  of  adaptations  to  date.  Here  it  is  that  the  prin- 
ciple of  association  largely  gets  its  astonishing  value  in 
nervous  and  mental  development. 

We  have  found  reason  to  think  that  mere  repetition  with 
association  would  not  suffice  for  development,  and  that  the 
principle   of  *  organic   imitation  '  must  be   added,  for  the 

1  Cf.  Tonnies'  remarks  on  Tarde's  book  in  Philos.  Monatshcfte,  1893,  P-  298, 
showing  the  need  of  more  definition  in  this  wliole  field. 


284  Organic  Imitatio7z. 

reason  that  association  alone  would  simply  render  habits 
more  compact.  This  is  true  also  in  higher  development 
after  the  process  of  memory  comes ;  yet  here  association 
has  much  wider  application.  For  example,  a  child  does 
not  learn  to  speak  by  merely  getting  his  accidental  vocal 
muscular  sensations  associated  with  the  significant  sounds 
which  he  makes,  though  I  know  that  that  is  a  wide-spread 
view.  For  at  that  rate  of  learning  the  number  of  words 
in  his  vocabulary  would  be  less  than  the  number  of  days 
in  his  life.  On  the  contrary,  he  yields  to  his  tendency  to 
imitate  all  sounds,  and  by  strenuous  effort  succeeds,  thus 
getting  a  great  number  of  significant  sounds  and  their 
necessary  muscular  sensations.  This,  now,  becomes  asso- 
ciation's opportunity  to  show  the  manner  of  its  action  —  a 
chance  it  could  not  have  had  otherwise.     And  it  does. 

Nervous  association  does  two  things.  First,  it  does 
here  what  it  has  been  seen  to  do  in  the  lower  organisms : 
it  binds  sense  of  stimulus  and  sense  of  movement  together. 
The  child  who  has  learned  to  make  a  sound,  then  makes  it 
by  association  whenever  he  hears  it.  But  second,  associa- 
tion does  more,  —  and  here  comes  in  the  tremendous 
influence  of  the  fact  which  I  have  been  describing  by  the 
phrase  'central  conspiracy,'  —  association  brings  differ- 
ent reactions  together  as  wholes ;  it  links  together  the 
elements  of  copy  at  the  centre,  so  that  a  stimulus  may 
produce,  not  only  its  own  associated  reaction,  but,  by  its 
association  with  another  stimulus,  or  with  the  vicniory  of 
that  other,  it  may  suffice  to  produce  the  reaction  associated 
with  the  second  stimulus,  or  a  third,  fourth,  etc.  This  we 
have  already  seen  in  the  fact  of  *  substitution '  in  the  mat- 
ter of  emotional  attitudes.^ 

1  Above,  Chap.  VIII.,  §  4. 


Physical  Basis  of  Mcuiory  and  Associafioji.     2S5 

The  play  of  this  form  of  association  and  its  importance 
appear  on  the  mental  side  in  the  detailed  facts  of  con- 
scious association.  This  is  mentioned  below  and  traced 
farther.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  the  brain  is  a  great  mass 
of  such  sensory  and  motor  processes  bound  together  by 
'association  fibres,'  all  attesting  the  growth  of  the  organ, 
as  a  whole,  by  the  action  of  association  upon  simple  func- 
tions. The  fact  that  brains  differ  from  one  another  only 
in  degree  of  associative  complexity,  and  the  further  fact 
that  all  complex  brain  functions  arise  from  the  complica- 
tion of  simple  reactive  functions,  these  facts  are  now 
axioms  of  physiology.  There  are  two  general  truths 
involved,  however,  which  are  suggestive  for  our  present 
topic. 

The  actual  exercise  of  the  most  complex  voluntary  func- 
tion involved  in  thought  and  conduct  involves  the  motor 
apparatus  which  is  also  used  by  the  simple  reflex  pro- 
cesses.^ This  has  further  mention  in  the  chapter  on 
Volition.  We  are  able  to  see  now  more  clearly  the 
reason  for  it.  The  new  more  complex  functions  are  born 
out  of  the  old  simple  ones  by  this  principle  of  organic 
association.  They  are  higher  co-ordinations  in  which  the 
lower  enter  as  necessary  elements.  The  apparatus  of  the 
old  cannot  be  superseded ;  that  would  take  away  the  basis 
for  the  new.  All  development  is  evolution.  When  an 
object  approaches  my  eye,  the  lid  flies  to.  But  I  use  the 
same  muscle  when  I  will  to  wink  my  eye.  In  the  one 
case,  I  stimulate  the  motor  process  by  a  percept  or  memory 
process,  associated  with  the  motor  lid-movement  process ; 

1  See  Chauveau  on  'The  Sensori-motor  Nerve  Circuit  of  Muscles'  in 
Brain,  1891,  pp.  I45ff.,  and  Exner  on  *  Senso-mobilitiit '  in  Pfliigcr's  Archiv 
filr  die  gesaniuile  Physiologie,  XLVIIL,  592  ff. 


286  Organic  Imitation, 

in   the  other  case,  the  same   motor  process  is  stimulated 
by  an  outside  event. 

The  evident  fact  to  be  noticed,  then,  is  that  the  more 
fixed  of  the  two  sides  —  sensor  and  motor  —  of  the  neural 
apparatus  is  the  motor  side.  It  represents  the  habits,  the 
organism's  own  repeated  responses  by  apparatus  which 
the  different  senses  and  the  higher  mental  processes  use 
in  common.  It  also  represents  the  great  antithesis  of  ebb 
and  flow  in  the  vital  processes  into  the  terms  of  which  all 
sorts  of  stimulation  are  translated.  While  the  sensory 
side  represents  the  shifting,  varying  life  of  stimulation  ; 
the  relativities,  the  modifications,  the  reasons  for  accovi- 
modation,  in  short.  The  sensory  centres  have  been  likened 
by  James  to  a  funnel,  which  pours  its  flood  down  into  the 
motor  channel.  Stimulations  can  be  accommodated  to 
only  as  far  as  the  processes  they  excite  can  be  drawn 
off  successfully  in  the  motor  channels  established  by 
habit.  Motor-habit,  then,  is  the  ineasure  of  nervotis  and 
vieiital  unity.  As  we  shall  see  below,^  the  sense  of  it 
affords  largely  the  permanence,  identity,  self-persistence 
of   the  whole  mental  system. 

A  second  fact  of  great  importance  arises  from  the 
increased  complexity  of  associations  in  the  brain.  We 
have  seen  the  elements  of  it  in  the  association  which  one 
sensory  process  may  form  with  a  certain  motor  process 
through  its  earlier  association  with  another  sensory  process 
more  directly  connected  with  the  same  motor  process.  The 
oft-cited  instance  of  the  burnt  child  dreading  the  fire 
is  a  case  of  it.  The  burn  is  at  first  associated  organ- 
ically with  the  withdrawing  movement ;  but  the  sight  of 
the  blaze  also  entered  originally  into  the  complex  experi- 

^  Chap.  X.,  §  3,  and  Chap.  XL,  §  i. 


Physical  Basis  of  Memory  and  Association.     287 

ence  of  the  fire.  So  the  sight  of  the  l^laze  now  comes  to 
bring  about  the  withdrawing  movements  directly,  although 
it  was  only  the  burn  and  its  pain  which  were  the  dynamo- 
genie  agents  capable  of  doing  it.  Or,  put  in  terms  of 
pleasure  and  advancing  movements :  the  child  sees  — 
tastes  —  grasps  an  apple.  The  next  time  he  sees  an 
apple,  he  grasps  at  it  before  he  gets  the  taste.  If  we  note 
well  that  the  first  order  is  imitative,  ?>.,  taste,  then  grasp- 
ing to  secure  the  taste  again,  and  note  also  that  it  is  by 
simple  association,  merely,  that  the  real  stimulus,  taste, 
disappears  largely  from  the  series  —  we  are  at  once  able 
to  give  a  new  meaning  to  the  principle  of  association.  The 
original  imitative  type  seems  entirely  to  disappear  from 
the  act  as  soon  as  the  child  gets  the  second  order,  seeing 
—  grasping  —  tasting ;  and  yet  without  imitation,  the 
reaction  necessary  to  the  association  itself  would  not  have 
been  learned.  It  is  possible  to  say,  therefore,  as  our 
former  chapters  would  lead  us  to  expect,  that  each  new 
accommodation  secured  by  central  nervous  development 
is  not  new  at  all  in  principle,  but  rest  directly  upon  imita- 
tion and  association.  Its  characteristic  feature,  however, 
is  its  complexity.  And  this  complexity  is  of  such  a  kind 
that  reactions  seem  to  lose  altogether  the  stininlus-repeating 
or  imitative  character  ivhich  they  had  to  have  at  first. 

On  the  nervous  side,  this  result  is  secured  by  the  forma- 
tion, between  different  brain  areas,  of  direct  connections, 
which  take  the  place  of  the  round-about  connections  first 
painfully  learned.  Pathology  is  full  of  cases  which  illus- 
trate it.  Speech  is  learned  by  direct  imitation  through 
the  ear,  but  afterwards  gets  to  be  stimulated  through  the 
eye  ;  that  is,  a  direct  connection  is  formed  from  the  op- 
tical  verbal   to   the    motor   speech    centre,    and   takes   the 


288  Ormnic  Imitation. 


<b 


place  of  the  course  through  the  auditory  verbal  centre. 
And  it  is  now  common  doctrine,  as  I  have  said  above,  that 
the  briefer,  more  automatic  functions  may  represent,  by 
neurological  short-cuts,  processes  which  at  first  required  a 
longer  series  of  processes. 

This  is  the  secret,  also,  this  fact  of  associative  short- 
cuts, of  the  abbreviating  of  phylogenesis  by  ontogenesis, — 
already  noted  above. ^  It  may  be  well  to  repeat  the  point, 
now  that  we  have  had  so  much  to  do  with  neurology.  Once 
let  such  a  short-cut  get  so  well  established  that  it  repre- 
sents a  more  powerful  organic  tendency  or  habit  than  the 
longer  process  which  in  its  genesis  it  represents  ;  or  once 
let  the  short-cut  break  in  upon  connections  formerly  used 
by  the  long  —  and  this  result  it  becomes  the  business 
of  heredity  or  natural  selection  to  preserve.  The  child, 
in  his  own  growth,  cannot  develop  instincts  for  the  per- 
formance of  activities  which  he  is  also' to  learn  to  perform 
voluntarily  ;  for  the  acquisition  of  volition  involves  the 
use  in  new  forms  of  the  very  elements  which  would  be 
held  fast  in  the  fixed  reflexes  of  instinct.  He  is  accord- 
ingly born  a  human  infant  without  developed  instincts, 
not  a  brute  with  them.  His  nervous  system  in  its  embry- 
onic development  does  not  fully  carry  out  all  the  details  of 
its  ancestral  history,  but  abbreviates  them  by  a  short-cut 
direct  to  the  volitional  stage,  omitting  the  instinctive  stage 
almost  altogether.  Darwin  notes  the  same  falling  away  of 
certain  simple  social  emotions  which  in  his  view  lie  at  the 
basis  of  the  ethical,  when  once  these  ethical  feelings  have 
become  well  established.^ 

1  Chap.  I.,  §  4. 

-  Exp.  of  the  Emotions,  p.  69.  I  see  hardly  any  limit  to  the  application  of 
this  principle  in  the  hands  of  evolutionists.     Whatever  seems  native,  a  p7-iori, 


Physical  Basis  of  Memory  and  Association.     289 

We  arc  able,  therefore,  in  view  of  the  foregoing"  expo- 
sitions, to  make  the  following  general  statement  :  tJie 
7ien'o?is  action  of  tJic  cerebral  centres  concerned  in  memory 
is  sufficiently  acconnted  for  as  a  development  from  the  simple 
reactions  of  organic  contractility,  in  accordance  zvith  the 
principle  of  '  organic  imitatioji '  already  defined.  In  these 
higher  functions  the  principle  of  habit  as  applied  to  com- 
pounded reactions  takes  on  the  broader  form  commonly 
known  as  '  association. ' 

And  yet  one  additional  remark.  Just  as  soon  as  the 
copy  for  imitation  becomes  a  matter  of  memory,  a  thing 
rung  up  in  the  nervous  centres  and  so  already  fully  there 
in  the  organism,  both  in  its  sensory  presence  and  in  its 
motor  worth,  then  it  is  no  longer  a  thing  to  be  accommo- 
dated to.  It  is  then  a  thing  already  accommodated  to. 
Its  influence  then  is  to  fix  more  and  more  steadily  the 
reaction  associated  with  it  at  first  by  effortful  imitation,  so 
that  its  present  imitation  —  its  circular  process  —  is  now 
an  agent  of  habit.  Notice  the  great  utility  of  the  infant's 
incessant  repetition  of  its  own  sounds,  words,  movements, 
etc.,  in  exercising  the  organs  and  strengthening  its  nas- 
cent powers.  The  same  is  seen  in  the  scale  of  race 
progress  —  a  species  refining  and  fixing  what  it  has  already 
acquired  —  in  the  fixing  of  instincts  through  the  instinctive 
imitation  of  some  animals  by  others,  by  their  young,  etc.,^ 
made  much  of  by  Wallace. 

may  be  held  to  be  an  outcome  whose  preparatory  stages  have  been  lost  by  the 
principle  of  abbreviation.  See  my  own  use  of  it,  below,  in  finding  the  genesis 
of  the  sense  of  identity  and  sufficient  reason  (Chap.  XL,  §  i). 

1  Observations  bearing  on  this  latter  aspect  of  the  case,  with  quotations 
from  Wallace  apd  Romanes,  are  cited  by  Morgan,  loc.  cit.,  pp.  454  ff.;  such 
as  the  constant  dependence  of  certain  birds'  nest-building  instinct  upon  the 
sight  of  their  home  nests,  etc. 


290  Organic  Imitation. 

All  the  processes  in  consciousness  fall  away;  the  reac- 
tion becomes  almost  reflex.  So  by  the  extraordinary 
cunning  of  the  organism,  the  very  means  of  its  new 
adaptations,  that  by  which  its  old  habits  are  modified  and 
broken  up,  its  imitative  reinstatement  of  its  experiences 
even  at  the  high  level  of  memory,  this  becomes  itself  a 
thing  of  habit,  just  as  it  does  at  the  lower  level  of  simple 
motor  adjustment ;  sinks  down  to  the  lower  levels  of  brain 
co-ordination  ;  and  is  found  actually  in  the  child  and  in 
animals  as  an  instinct  to  imitate.  But  at  this  level  the 
instinct  to  imitate  is  a  matter  of  consciousness.  The 
mental  copy,  seen,  heard,  remembered,  is  set  up  and 
aimed  at ;  imitation  is  no  longer  the  organism's  weapon  ; 
it  is  now  the  sword  of  mind,  as  the  following  chapters  on 
'Conscious  Imitation  '  aim  to  make  clear. 


CHAPTER    X. 

Conscious  Imitation  (begun)  ;  the  Origin  of  Memory 
AND  Imagination. 

§  I.    Certain  General  Facts  and  Explanations. 

We  are  now  clear  of  neurological  considerations  in  the 
main,  and  may  trace  the  development  of  consciousness. 
The  place  of  consciousness  in  phylogenetic  progress  has 
already  come  up  for  notice,  and  we  have  been  able  to  find  in 
consciousness  a  higher  sphere  of  organic  accommodation. 
That  is,  it  seemed  necessary  to  assume  the  analogue  of 
the  nervous  basis  of  pleasure  and  pain  very  early  in  the 
life  series,  in  order  to  get  any  complexity  of  development 
at  all.  Assuming,  moreover,  the  truth  of  our  theory  of 
development  as  now  sketched,  which  bases  it,  from  the 
start,  on  the  two  factors,  contractility,  and  the  pleasure  and 
pain  analogue  found  in  central  'excess,'  we  ought  now  to 
find  the  further  development  of  consciousness  an  illus- 
tration of  the  same  processes. 

The  rest  of  our  discussions,  therefore,  may  turn  upon 
further  analyses  of  conscious  states,  whose  reason  for 
being  is  evident  only  when  we  connect  them  with  the 
function  of  consciousness  in  development  as  a  whole. 
And  as  it  is  the  essence  of  our  doctrine  of  accommoda- 
tion that  the  imitative  reaction   is  the  type  of  all  organic 

291 


292  Conscio7is  Imitation. 

accommodations,  our  further  interesting  task  becomes  that 
of  tracing  and  explaining  the  presence  of  imitation  in  the 
development  of  consciousness. 

We  may  preface  our  detailed  treatment  of  this  topic 
with  two  statements  already  put  in  evidence,  both  of  which 
are  the  clear  outcome  of  current  psychological  opinion. 
I  quote  them  from  my  earlier  work,  in  which  they  appear 
as  the  natural  result  of  a  statement  of  nervous  structure 
and  function  in  its  relation  to  consciousness,  written  for 
purposes  of  exposition  only. 

"All  the  phenomena  of  consolidation  or  'downward 
growth,'  on  the  one  hand,  illustrate  what  is  known  as 
the  law  of  Habit ;  all  the  phenomena  of  specialization, 
or  'upward  growth,'  illustrate  the  law  of  Accommodation. 

''As  for  Habit:  Physiologically,  habit  means  readiness 
for  function,  produced  by  previous  exercise  of  the  function. 
Anatomically,  it  means  the  arrangement  of  elements  more 
suitably  for  a  function,  in  consequence  of  former  modifica- 
tions of  arrangement  through  that  function.  PsycJiologi- 
cally,  it  means  loss  of  oversight,  diffttsioji  of  attejition, 
subsidijig  consciousness. 

''As  for  Accommodation :  Physiologically  and  anatomi- 
cally, it  means  the  breaking  up  of  a  habit,  the  widening  of 
the  organic  for  the  reception  or  accommodation  of  new 
conditions.  Psychologically,  it  means  reviving  conscious- 
ness, concentration  of  attention,  voluntary  control  —  the 
m,ental  state  ivhicJi  has  its  most  general  expression  iji  what 
we  know  as  Interest.  In  habit  and  interest  we  find  the 
psychological  poles  corresponding  to  the  lowest  and  the 
highest  in  the  activities  of  the  nervous  system."  The 
application  of  these  conclusions,  especially  those  italicized, 
will  be  plain  as  we  go  on. 


General  Faefs  anei  Explanations.  293 

The  books  on  psychology  which  have  had  the  courage 
to  say  anything  about  imitation  —  and  they  are  few  — 
have  generally,  by  what  they  said,  only  tended  to  justify 
the  conservatism  of  those  who  had  not  the  courage.  It 
has  been  a  topic  of  extraordinary  neglect  and  confusion. 
One  of  the  latest  authors  ^  makes  certain  statements  about 
imitation  which  may  be  considered  typical  of  the  uncer- 
tainty which  seems  to  shield  itself  behind  eclecticism. 

He  says  (p.  218)  :  ''Since  it  only  begins  to  appear  about 
the  fourth  month,  when  simple  voluntary  action  directed 
towards  an  end  is  also  first  recognizable,  it  is  possible  that 
imitation  is  acquired";  then  (219),  ''As  a  rapid  reaction 
of  a  sensori-motor  form,  it  has  the  look  of  a  mechanical 
process  ...  in  many  cases  there  seems  to  be  no  conscious 
purpose.  .  .  .  There  is  much  to  favour  the  view  that  it  is 
purely  ideo-motor  and  so  sub-volitional"  ;  then  (219,  note), 
"  It  is  pointed  out  by  Gurney  that  imitation  plays  a  con- 
spicuous part  in  the  hypnotic  state"  ;  and  again  (219-220), 
''  Imitation  follows  on  the  persistence  of  motor-ideas  having 
a  pleasurable  interest.  .  .  .  The  child  does  not  imitate  all 
the  actions  it  sees,  but  only  certain  ones  which  specially 
impress  it.  .  .  .  Hence  in  most,  at  least,  of  a  child's  imi- 
tation there  is  a  rudiment  of  desire.  For  the  rest,  the 
abundant  imitative  activity  of  early  life  illustrates  the 
strength  of  the  playful  impulse,  of  the  disposition  to 
indulge  in  motor  activity  for  the  sake  of  its  intrinsic 
pleasurableness "  (italics  his).  Again  (109),  he  makes 
imitative  sympathy  instinctive. 

And  yet  if  we  examine  these  separate  statements,  we 
find  that  they  rest  generally  upon  fact,  and  it  becomes 
evident  that  the  need  in  this  topic  is  a  theory  of  the  reac- 

^  Sully,  The  Human  Mind. 


294  Conscious  Imitaiioii, 

tion  in  question  which  will  cover  facts  drawn  from  an  area 
wider  than  that  which  individual  or  analytic  psychology 
is  usually  called  upon  to  cover.  It  may  therefore  be  taken 
as  the  legitimate  task  of  such  a  theory  as  mine,  which  not 
only  recognizes  imitation  but  endeavours  also  to  explain 
it,  to  set  in  order  the  array  of  facts  cited  by  current  psy- 
chologists. 

Fact  i.  The  late  rise  of  conscious  imitation  in  the 
child :  sixth  or  seventh  month.  This  fact  may  be  ac- 
counted for  on  the  very  evident  ground  of  the  distinction 
of  inherited  habit  from  the  new  accommodations  of  the 
individual  child.  The  child's  early  months  are  taken  up 
with  its  vegetative  functions.  The  machinery  of  heredity 
is  working  itself  out  in  a  new  individual.  Further,  acci- 
dental imitations  struck  by  him  do  not  give  pleasure  until 
the  senses  are  sharpened  to  discern  them,  and  until  the 
attention  is  capable  of  its  operations  of  comparison,  co- 
ordination, etc.  ;  before  this  there  is  no  element  of  pleas- 
ure in  the  happy  successes  of  imitations,  to  lend  its  influence 
for  the  continuance  of  them.  As  soon  as  these  conditions 
get  fulfilled,  however,  we  find  not  only  that  the  child 
begins  to  show  germinal  imitations,  such  as  the  monoto- 
nous repetition  of  its  own  vocal  performances  (ma-ma-ma-), 
but  also  that  its  nervous  connections  give  it  an  instinctive 
tendency  to  biological  subconscious  reactions,  distinctly  of 
the  imitative  type,  such  as  the  walking  alternation  of  the 
legs.  In  the  main,  therefore,  there  is  instinctive  tendency 
to  functions  of  the  imitative  type  and  to  some  direct 
organic  imitations ;  but  those  clear  conscious  imitations 
which  represent  new  accommodations  and  acquirements 
are  not  as  such  instinctive,  and  so  come  later  as  individual 
acquirements. 


General  Faels  eiud  Expleiuaiious.  295 

Fact  2.  Imitation  is  often  a  simple  sensori-motor  reac- 
tion without  conscious  purpose,  e.g.,  it  is  involuntary. 
This  is  so  evident  that  I  have  based  an  important  dis- 
tinction on  it  in  an  earlier  chapter — that  between  'simple' 
imitation,  considered  as  'suggestion,'  and  'persistent'  imi- 
tation, which  turns  out  to  be  the  first  typical  exhibition  of 
volition.  So  it  is  in  hypnotic  conditions,  imitation  is  there 
ideo-motor  suggestion.  This  means  that,  after  all,  imitation 
considered  as  a  type  of  reaction,  is  organic  and  inherited. 
It  has  its  place  among  race  habits.  Infants  show  remark- 
able differences,  for  example,  in  the  readiness  and  facility 
with  which  they  learn  to  speak.  This  does  not  arise  from 
difference  in  practice,  for  practice  never  overcomes  the 
difference  ;  but  it  is  due  to  differences  in  the  instinctive 
tendencies  of  the  infants  to  a  reaction  which  is,  par  excel- 
lejice,  imitative  in  its  type  and  method  of  development.^ 

On  this  basis  it  is  possible  to  admit  the  truth  of  the 
first  fact  cited,  that  many  imitations  are  late  acquisitions 
in  the  child's  first  year,  and  are,  therefore,  phenomena  of 
accommodation  and  acquired  things  involving  volition  o5: 
purpose ;  and,  at  the  same  time,  admit  reflex  imitations 
and  explain  them. 

Further,  our  theory  requires,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  just 
this  state  of  things.  Volition  would  be  impossible  without 
this  great  class  of  quite  involuntary  sensori-motor  and 
ideo-motor,  as  well  as  purely  biological  reactions,  which 
fall  under  the  imitative  type,  and  which  represent  instinc- 
tive inherited  tendencies  to  movement.  In  more  unde- 
veloped consciousness,  further,  we  find  that  the  purely 
suggestive  influence  of  a  '  copy  for  imitation  '  may  be  so 

1  The  same  is  true  of  handwriting:  cf.  Romanes,  Ment.  Evolution  in  Ani- 
mals, p.  194. 


296  Conscio2is  Imitation, 

strong,  as  is  remarked  below,  that  reactions  follow  despite 
their  painful  character :  a  fact  which  would  be  impos- 
sible on  the  theory  that  all  voluntary  action  is  acquired 
under  lead  of  the  pleasure-pain  association,  without  such  a 
basis  of  native  tendency.  The  law  of  habit,  which  exhibits 
itself  in  the  inherited  motor  tendencies  I  have  spoken  of,  is 
in  these  cases  too  strong  for  the  law  of  accommodation 
through  pleasure  and  pain,  and  works  itself  out  in  conduct 
in  opposition  to  warnings  of  temporary  damage  to  the 
organism. 

Again,  not  only  is  this  true  of  imitation  itself  consid- 
ered as  a  phenomenon.  It  is  true  of  all  motor  acquisi- 
tions, i.e.,  that  they  become  instinctive  in  some  cases,  and 
yet  must  be  acquired  in  others.  I  have  already  pointed  this 
out  in  the  case  of  many  instincts  and  of  emotional  expres- 
sion. The  chick  is  born  with  full-fledged  space  instincts  ; 
man  acquires  'intuitions'  of  space  relations,  and  in  such  a 
finished  way  that  Kant  thinks  them  native.  Beasts  in 
many  cases  seem  to  inherit  their  vocal  cries ;  man  learns 
his  speech,  indeed,  but  learns  it  so  well  that  it  gets  to  be 
reflex,  as  is  seen  in  certain  aboulic  patients.  And  in  many 
cases  the  original  process  of  learning  is  seen  to  be  iden- 
tical with  imitation  from  the  fact  that  many  animals  do 
not  learn  their  characteristic  cries,  as  birds  their  songs,  if 
they  do  not  hear  adults  of  their  kind  make  such  sounds, 
although  they  apparently  never  consciously  imitate  their 
adults  at  all.  The  instinct  of  imitation  is  so  bound  up  in 
all  these  race  acquisitions  or  habits  that  its  exercise  is 
often  necessary  to  bring  them  out. 

Fact  3.  Children  are  more  imitative  than  animals, 
with  one  or  two  striking  exceptions,  such  as  monkeys,  the 
mocking-bird,   etc.     This   is   due   simply  to  the  fact  that 


General  Facts  and  Explanations.  297 

the  child's  life,  as  heredity  has  laid  it  out  for  him,  is  to 
be  largely  one  of  acquisitions  or  new  adjustments,  while 
the  animal's  is  to  be  one  of  repetitions  of  race  habits  or 
old  adjustments.  In  the  words  of  Preyer,^  "the  more 
kinds  of  co-ordinated  movement  an  animal  brings  into  the 
world,  the  fewer  is  he  able  to  learn  afterwards."  The 
child  is  par  excellence  the  animal  that  learns  ;  and  if  imita- 
tion is  the  way  to  learn,  he  has  '  chosen  the  better  part '  in 
being  more  imitative  than  the  rest.  He  is  born  with  a 
more  'broken  up'  or  mobile  nervous  organization,  because 
his  immediate  ancestors  have  had  full  consciousness  and 
volition,  whose  function  is  to  secure  new  adaptations 
by  choice,  memory,  etc.,  in  opposition  to  the  old  reflex 
adaptations  of  animal  instinct.  The  long  period  of  his 
infancy  has  come  with  this  mobility  and  relative  helpless- 
ness, to  give  him  time  to  acquire  these  higher  conscious 
adaptations. 

Animal  imitativeness  is  generally  understated,  however.^ 
The  most  social  animals,  including  man,  are  the  most 
imitative,  as  we  would  expect  from  what  is  said  below 
about  the  imitation  factor  in  the  social  consciousness,  and 
this  would  seem  also  to  give  us  an  explanation  of  the 
strength  of  the  imitative  tendency  in  certain  animals  which 
show  it  strongly  marked. 

Another  reason  for  the  difference  is  to  be  found  in  the 
fact  that  we  are  usually  looking  for  a  particular  kind  of 
imitation  in  the  cases  of  animals  —  the  imitation  of  acts 
which  they  do  not  normally  perform.  The  animals  have  so 
much  instinctive  endowment  that  most  of  their  perform- 

^  Physiologic  des  Embryos,  p.  545. 

2  Cf.  the  remarkable  performances  of  dogs,  cats,  birds,  etc.,  in  the  way  of 
imitation  given  by  Romanes,  EvoL  of  Mind  in  Animals,  Chap.  XIV. 


298  Co7iscioMs  Imitation. 

ances  are  taken  as  a  matter  of  nature,  and  only  those  clear 
cases  of  imitation  are  noted  which  are  novel  and  rare. 
Yet  it  is  probable  that  many  of  the  most  '  innate  '  powers 
of  the  animals  are  brought  out,  perfected,  and  constantly 
kept  efficient,  by  the  imitation  of  their  own  species.  In 
these  cases  the  presence  of  imitation  can  only  be  detected 
by  the  artificial  separation  of  mate  from  mate,  young  from 
young,  etc.  ;  but  interesting  cases  of  crippled  performances 
in  circumstances  of  such  separation  are  coming  to  light, 
such  as  the  abortive  crowing  of  young  cocks,  the  failure 
in  barking  of  young  dogs,  the  loss  of  the  form  of  nest- 
building  in  young  birds,  when  the  example  of  their  elders 
is  ruled  out  in  these  instances  respectively. 

Fact  4.  The  tendency  to  imitate  may  come  into  direct 
conflict  with  the  prudential  teachings  of  pleasure  and  pain, 
and  yet  may  be  acted  upon.  A  child  may  do,  and  keep  on 
doings  imitations  zvhick  cause  him  pai?z. 

This  may  be  readily  explained  when  we  take  the  facts 
simply  in  hand,  and  rid  ourselves  of  current  doctrines  of 
ethics  and  theories  of  conduct.  If  imitation  is  anything 
like  the  fundamental  fact  which  the  foreo-oins:  account 
takes  it  to  be, — the  means  of  selection  among  varied 
external  stimulations,  —  it  becomes  evident  in  what  ways 
pleasure  and  pain  may  be  related  to  such  reactions.  Pleas- 
ure and  pain  are  now  seen  to  be  the  index  of  a  change 
brought  about  by  a  stimulus  or  by  a  reaction  itself  consid- 
ered as  a  new  stimulus.  The  repetition  of  this  stimulus 
is  desirable,  and  this  is  secured  by  further  imitation.  The 
pleasure  is  enhanced  by  the  repetition,  which  thus  aims  at 
securing  the  continued  presence  of  the  'copy'  ;  that  is  to 
say,  the  pleasure  accruing  is  something  additional  to  the 
copy  or  'object'  which  the  original  reaction  aims  at. 


General  Facts  and  Explanations.  299 

The  observation  of  young  children  directly  and  plainly 
confirms  the  truth  of  this  position.  The  child  invariably 
reacts  at  first  upon  objects,  presentations,  things  present 
to  it.  So  in  some  circumstances,  suggestion,  serving  to 
urge  him  on  to  new  accommodation,  or  simply  calling  out 
an  old  habit  into  exercise,  works  in  spite  of  the  pleasure  or 
pain  to  which  it  gives  rise.  I  have  illustrated  this  above  ^ 
with  concrete  cases  from  infant  life.  Romanes  finds  it  in 
the  animal  world. ^  Pathology  is  full  of  striking  illustra- 
tions of  it. 

Further,  the  transition  from  this  nai've  suggestibility  to 
the  reflective  consciousness  in  which  pleasures  and  pains 
become  considerations  or  ends,  is  marked  in  the  life-his- 
tory of  the  infant.  He  learns  to  dally  with  his  bottle,  to 
postpone  his  enjoyment,  to  subordinate  a  present  to  a  dis- 
tant pleasure,  by  a  gradual  process  of  reflective  self-control. 
He  gradually  grows  out  of  the  quasi-neutrality  of  habit  to 
be  a  reflective  egotist. 

In  adult  life  it  is  undoubtedly  true  that  we  usually  do 
things  because  we  like  to  do  them  and  stop  doing  them 
when  they  hurt,  but  even  then  it  is  not  always  so.  Just 
as  the  little  child  sometimes  acts  from  mere  suggestion, 
at  the  same  time  moved  to  tears  by  the  anticipation  of 
pain  to  result  from  it  ;  so  to  the  man  a  copy  may  be 
presented  so  strongly  for  imitation,  it  may  be  so  moving 
by  its  simple  suggestiveness,  that  he  acts  upon  it  even 
though  it  have  a  hedonic  colouring  of  pain.  The  prin- 
ciple of  accommodation  requires  that  it  be  so,  for  other- 

1  Chap.  VI.,  §  3,  on  *  Deliberative  Suggestion.' 

2  "  There  is  abundant  evidence  of  one  individual  imitating  the  habits 
of  another  individual,  whether  the  action  imitated  be  beneficial  or  useless" 
(^Mental  Evolution  in  Animals,  \).  220). 


300  Consciotts  Imitation. 

wise  there  could  be  no  development,  except  within  the 
very  narrow  range  afforded  by  accidental  discharges.  No 
new  adjustment  or  adaptation  could  be  effected  without 
risk  of  pain  and  damage.  If  the  child  never  reacted  in 
any  way,  but  in  pleasurable  ways  guaranteed  already  by 
its  inheritance  or  by  its  experience,  how  could  it  grow } 
So  if  we  sought  only  what  we  have  already  grown  to  like, 
how  could  new  appetites  be  acquired }  The  ethical  truth 
that  pain  is  a  schoolmaster,  that  we  cannot  dispense  with 
its  discipline  and  also  grow  —  this  truth  holds  for  the  vital 
organism  and  its  reactions  as  well. 

But  the  question  then  remains  :  How  is  this  possible,  if 
the  criterion  of  what  is  advantageous  is  pleasure,  and  if 
the  organism  has  developed  all  the  way  through  on  that 
principle }  How  can  imitation,  dictated  itself  by  pleasure 
and  pain,  come  to  conflict  with  the  indications  of  pleasure 
and  pain  ? 

The  answer  to  this  seeming  difficulty  is  evident  when 
we  remember  one  of  the  points  already  made.  The  accom- 
modation-reaction—  the  imitation  dictated  by  pleasure  and 
pain  —  is  so  regular  in  its  kind,  giving  the  circular  process, 
and  involves  organic  elements  so  much  the  same,  that  it 
has  itself  become  a  matter  of  habit.  The  tendency  to 
imitate  has  thus  become  a  hereditary  thing,  given  by 
endowment  in  the  motor  organism.  The  idea  of  a  move- 
ment has  become,  as  psychologists  so  often  tell  us,  itself 
a  tendency  to  perform  that  movement ;  yea,  the  very 
beginning  of  the  movement.  The  child  is  therefore  ac- 
tuated by  all  the  impetus  of  race  history  to  imitate,  to 
use  his  own  motor  apparatus  upon  every  hint  which  he 
gets  of  a  movement,  and  this  tendency  takes,  of  course, 
no  account  of  exceptions.     The  pain,  therefore,  in  which 


Origin  of  Alcnwry  and  Association  of  Ideas.     301 

a  certain  new  reaction  results  is,  at  first,  only  a  partial 
check  upon  the  reaction.  It  is,  of  course,  in  so  far  a  new 
accoir.modation,  and  works  by  association,  as  far  as  it  can 
do  so,  to  inhibit  the  movement;  but  its  influence  is  'up- 
hill' It  cannot  once  for  all  undo  the  old  inherited  ten- 
dency.    And  for  a  long  time  the  latter  wins  the  day. 

When  reflection  begins,  however,  and  with  it  volition, 
then  the  case  is  altered.  Volition  is  not  possible  until  just  the 
breaking  up,  modifying,  snubbing,  of  inherited  habit,  which 
it  is  the  office  of  new  pains  and  pleasures  to  bring  about,  is, 
to  a  degree,  already  accomplished.  And  volition  is  no  more 
than  just  the  ratification  of  this  break-up,  and  the  further 
accommodation  to  the  conditions  which  have  brought 
about  the  'break-up.'  Man  then  becomes  an  agent.  He 
reflects  upon  both  the  old  and  the  new,  and  his  choice 
represents  the  best  adjustment  into  which  all  the  elements 
and  tendencies  within  him  may  fall  for  future  reaction  or 
conduct.  But  then  the  fight  with  the  dictates  of  pleasure 
and  pain  may  become  only  more  open,  in  the  degree  in 
which,  in  his  deliberation,  he  may  discern  the  permanent 
adaptations  represented  by  self-denial,  social  co-operation, 
etc.,  as  opposed  to  the  temporary  ones  of  pleasure  and 
pain. 

§  2.     TJie  Origi7i  of  Memory  mid  Associatioft  of  Ideas. 

The  neurological  function  already  described  as  'the 
physical  basis  of  memory,'  ^  and  the  manner  of  its  rise, 
will  at  once  suggest  the  psychological  doctrine  as  well. 
We  have  found  the  organism  developing  a  system  of  central 
ganglia  and  connections  for  the  purpose  of  being  relieved 
of  its  dependence  upon  direct  sense-stimulation.     By  this 

1  Above,  Chap.  IX.,  §  3. 


302  Conscio2is  Imitation. 

arrangement  the  processes  corresponding  to  the  memory 
of  these  sense  experiences  are  aroused,  from  within,  from 
other  centres,  or  from  without  indirectly,  by  associated 
processes,  in  lieu  of  the  action  of  the  real  original  object. 
Such  a  process  thus  started  gives  to  consciousness  the 
picture  or  image  of  the  object,  which  we  call  a  'memory.' 

If,  now,  to  keep  within  consciousness,  the  original  sen- 
sation-content,—  the  stimulus  which  it  is  the  business  of 
the  reaction  to  confirm  by  repeating,  or  to  banish  by  fail- 
ing to  repeat,  thus  illustrating  imitation,  —  if  this  be  con- 
sidered as  respects  the  reaction  which  it  arouses,  then  we 
may  have  the  same  function  in  kind  ascribed  to  the  mem- 
ory copy  as  to  it.  But  the  reaction  will  then  have  another 
office ;  its  province  will  be  to  enable  the  organism  to 
anticipate  experiences,  the  consequences  of  which  it  has 
once  suffered  or  enjoyed.  It  thus  performs  its  life-preserv- 
ing reaction  before  the  real  stimulus  comes,  and  so  secures 
benefit,  or  avoids  damage.  The  child  rerneynbers  the  flame 
and  the  pain,  and  zvithdraws  before  tJie  fire  toitcJies  him. 
He  remembers  the  apple,  and  the  pleasure,  and  secures  the 
fruit  for  himself  by  reacJmig. 

Further,  we  have  seen  how,  on  the  neurological  side,  the 
processes  ring  one  another  up,  so  that  one  may  release  the 
reaction  which  originally  belonged  by  right  of  imitation 
only  to  another.  The  question  on  the  side  of  conscious- 
ness, as  to  how  the  different  '  copies '  get  to  ring  one 
another  up,  in  such  a  system,  is  the  question  of  association. 

They  can  at  first  act  together,  it  is  plain,  only  as  far  as 
the  original  external  things  are  together.  For  example, 
you  speak  a  word ;  I  at  once  write  it.  I  can  do  this  because 
I  heard  the  word  sound  when  I  saw  the  written  word  and 
learned  to  trace  it.    To-morrow,  by  reason  of  a  brain  lesion. 


Origin  of  Alcniory  and  Associaiioi  oj  Ideas.     303 

I  am  unable  to  write  the  word  when  I  hear  you  speak  it, 
but  I  can  still  copy  the  word  when  you  set  it  before  me. 
The  lesion  has  simply  deprived  me  of  the  use  of  the  internal 
visual  copy  which  I  imitated  in  writing,  by  cutting  the 
writing-reaction  apparatus  off  from  its  connection  with  the 
auditory  seat  from  which  this  visual  copy  was  accustomed 
to  be  'rung  up.'  But  the  simpler  imitation  of  the  external 
visual  copy  remains  possible.  A  step  further:  I  see  a  man, 
and  at  once  write  his  name.  Here  the  visual  image  of  the 
man  rings  up  the  auditory  image  of  the  name-word,  this 
rings  up  the  visual  copy-image  of  the  written  word,  and 
this  I  imitate  by  writing.  But  all  of  these  images  were 
once  real  external  things  to  me  and  existed  together,  in 
my  learning,  by  various  twos  and  threes.  Yet  if  any  one 
had  asked  me  why  I  wrote  the  man's  name,  I  would  have 
said  :  '  Because  I  remember  it.'  Each  one  of  these  images 
is  itself  a  '  copy  for  imitation,'  when  needed  for  its  own 
appropriate  reaction,  and  only  by  this  association  does  this 
typical  character  become  obscured.  A  young  child,  on 
seeing  the  man,  would  say  'Man,'  i.e.,  would  imitate  the 
auditory  copy  which  the  sight  of  the  man  rang  up.  And 
a  certain  child  of  mine  would  probably  hasten  to  ask  for  a 
pencil  in  order  to  draw  the  man,  thus  imitating  the  sche- 
matic outline  man  fixed  in  her  memory  by  earlier  efforts 
to  imitate  the  shape  of  the  real  thing.  In  all  these  cases 
the  reaction  follows  either  directly  upon  an  external  stim- 
ulus or  upon  a  memory  image  which  represents  another 
external  thins:  existinc:  at  some  time  alonsfside  the  first. 

In  other  words,  association  by  contiguity  is  simply  the 
progress  from  external  togetherness  into  internal  together- 
ness, from  fact  to  memory.  Your  spoken  word  brings  up 
my  written  word  copy.      Why  '^.      Because  sound  and  written 


304  Conscious  Imitatioii. 

copy  existed  together  when  I  learned  to  write,  and  so  on 
with  all  the  instances. 

But  suppose  a  perfectly  new  external  copy  rings  up 
another  copy  which  is  only  internal :  why  is  this  ?  Thus 
a  new  man  seen  brings  up  an  old  name  written.  Why  ? 
Evidently  because  there  are  some  other  elements  of  copy 
either  external  or  internal  which  have  been  together  with 
each ;  this  is  association  by  resemblance  or  contrast. 
'  Man  seen  '  and  *  name  heard '  were  present  together  when 
I  made  the  old  acquaintance,  and  afterwards  '  name  heard ' 
and  *  name  written '  were  associated  by  contiguity.  So 
when  I  hear  the  same  name  in  conversation  with  a  new 
face  I  think  of  the  written  name.  The  sound  name,  there- 
fore, has  been  common  to  both  associations,  and  by  it  the 
written  name  arises  when  I  see  the  new  acquaintance. 

I  have  used  this  last  example,  rather  than  the  usual  ones 
of  the  text-books  drawn  from  direct  resemblance  (a  photo- 
graph suggesting  aman^),  because  it  is  evident  that  such 
association  by  resemblance  is  only  a  special  and  very  open 
case  of  what  I  have  called  the  principle  of  '  lapsed  links.' 
In  this  case,  the  auditory  sound  image  is  just  as  truly  a 
link  between  the  new  acquaintance's  face  and  the  written 
name  of  the  old  one,  or  between  my  images  of  the  two 
faces,  one  in  memory  and  one  in  perception,  as  actual 
similarity  of  feature  would  be.  In  such  ordinary  feature- 
resemblance  both  copies  are  in  the  same  sense  —  the  two 
faces  are  both  seen.  But  similarity,  so  called,  is  really  a 
much  wider  thing.  Another  centre  —  the  auditory,  in  the 
case  supposed  —  may  come  between,  as  a  link. 

Then  this  link  lapses.  I  tend  to  behave  toward  the  new 
man  as  I  would  toward  the  old  ;  even   speaking  the  same 

1  See  my  Handbook,  I.,  Senses  and  Intellect,  Chap.   XI. 


Origin  of  Memory  and  Association  of  Ideas.      305 

name  to  him  is  behaviour,  of  course.  The  new  copy  comes 
to  usurp,  as  far  as  it  may,  the  reaction  belonging  to  the 
old,  leavincf  out  the  link  of  association  altogether. 

Take  another  case  :  a  musician  plays  by  reading  printed 
notes,  and  forgets  that  in  learning  the  meaning  of  the 
notes  he  imitated  the  movements  and  sounds  which  his 
instructor  made  ;  but  the  intermediate  copies  have  so  fallen 
away  that  his  performance  seems  to  offer  no  surface  imi- 
tation at  all,  and  pathological  cases  show  that  even  the 
intervening  brain  processes  become  unnecessary,  a  'short- 
cut '  being  established  between  sight  and  movement.  His 
hearing  copy-system  persists  to  the  end  only  to  guide  or 
control  his  muscular  reactions.  But  a  musician  of  the 
visual  type  may  go  farther.  He  may  play  from  memory  of 
the  printed  notes  ;  that  is,  he  may  play  from  a  transplanted 
visual  copy  of  notes  which  themselves  are  but  shorthand, 
or  substitute,  expressions  of  earlier  sound  and  muscular 
copies  ;  and  finally  the  name  only  of  a  familiar  selection 
may  be  sufficient  to  start  a  performance  guided  only  by 
a  subconscious  muscular  copy  series.  So  also  in  the  case 
of  the  patient  who  can  move  a  limb  only  when  he  sees 
it  ;  we  have  to  suppose  that  his  properly  imitative  action 
on  the  basis  of  movement  memories  is  now  performed 
through  the  substitution  for  them  of  visual  images. 

Reflection  convinces  us  that  we  have  now  reached  a 
principle  —  when  due  weight  is  also  given  to  the  explana- 
tions earlier  made  on  the  neurological  side  ^  —  of  wide- 
reaching  application  in  mental  development.  We  see  how 
it  is  possible  for  reactions  which  were  originally  simple  imi- 
tative suggestions  to  lose  all  appearance  of  their  true  origin. 
Copy-links  at  first  distinctly  present  as  external  things,  and 

^  Above,  Chap.  IX.,  §  3. 
X 


3o6  Conscious  Imitatioii. 

afterwards  present  with  almost  equal  distinctness  as  inter- 
nal memories,  may  become  quite  lost  in  the  rapid  progress 
of  consciousness.  New  connections  get  established  in  the 
network  of  association,  and  motor  discharges  get  stimulated 
thus  which  were  possible  at  first  only  by  ifjtitation  and  owed 
their  formation  to  it. 

If  this  principle  should  be  proved  to  be  of  universal 
application,  we  would  then  be  able  to  say  that  every  intel- 
lige?tt  action  is  stimulated  by  imitative  copies  whose  presence 
the  action  in  question  tends  to  maintain,  or  to  snppi^ess. 

A  farther  confirmation  of  the  fact  is  seen  in  the  pro- 
cess of  learning  to  name  objects.  The  child  gets  the 
required  word  by  direct  imitation  of  the  sound  heard  by 
him.  The  application  of  the  word  to  the  object  keeps 
his  interest  and  stimulates  his  effort,  but  it  is  no  part  of 
his  learning.  But  after  he  has  learned  to  use  the  term 
easily,  he  speaks  it  directly  at  the  object.  He  no  longer 
needs  to  keep  the  sound  copy  before  him,  and  it  lapses  so 
completely  that  if  we  had  not  been  with  him  when  he 
learned  we  would  never  suspect  that  the  association  be- 
tween name  and  thing  was  of  imitative  origin.  He  can 
name  the  thing  only  because  he  has  imitated  a  sound,  and 
then  by  association  the  visual  image  of  the  thing  has 
usurped  the  reaction  created  by  this  imitation.  Pathologi- 
cal cases  show  that  this  concealment  of  imitative  origin 
may  go  so  far  that  patients  may  be  able  to  name  objects 
seen  when  they  can  no  longer  imitate  the  same  sounds  when 
they  hear  them.^  It  is  as  if  the  son  of  a  washerwoman 
refuse  to  recognize  his  mother  when  he  takes  the  social 
position  of  his  wife,  even  though  the  wife  is  spending  the 
money  which  the  humble  mother  has  earned. 

1  See  Bastian,  Brain  as  Organ  of  Mind,  p.  623. 


Origin  of  Aleuiory  and  Association  of  Ideas.     307 

The  very  great  importance  of  this  principle,  apart  from 
the  question  of  fact,  is  seen  in  its  genetic  applications.  It 
exhibits  the  higher  mental  functions  as  a  great  stride  in 
accommodation.  Memory  and  association  do  exactly  the 
same  thing  for  the  organism,  later,  that  perception,  sensa- 
tion, contractility,  do  earlier.  Association  enables  us  to 
react  to  facts  which  are  distant  from  present  facts  but 
allied  to  them.  Memory  enables  us  to  react  to  the  facts 
of  the  future  as  if  they  were  present,  thus  conserving 
the  lessons  of  the  past.  Perception  enables  us  to  set 
present  facts  in  their  proper  setting,  and  thus  to  react 
upon  them  with  full  reference  to  their  significance.  Sen- 
sation enables  us  to  react  upon  facts  according  to  their 
immediate  worth  to  the  organism.  Contractility,  exhibit- 
ing itself  in  'organic  imitation,'  is  the  original  form  of 
adaptive  reaction  which  works  through  the  whole  process 
of  development. 

And  with  these  higher  reaches  of  accommodation,  we 
now  see,  the  method  of  it  remains  the  same.  Pleasure 
and  pain,  mixed  up  with  the  reactions  of  emotion,  lead  to 
the  'excess'  discharge  which  is  consolidated  in  the  atten- 
tion, and  selection  by  attention  gets  its  highest  fruition  in 
the  explicit  selective  function  of  consciousness,  volition. ^ 

The  actual  dynamogenic  parallel  between  simple  sensa- 
tion, on  one  hand,  and  memory,  on  the  other,  appears  in 
the  different  classes  of  '  suggestions,'  known  as  sensori- 
motor and  ideo-motor,  illustrated  in  detail  in  an  earlier 
place.  The  facts  of  suggestion  should  be  constantly 
borne  in  mind,  since  they  show  the  transitions  in  behaviour 
between  reflexes  and  volitions,  and  bridge,  in  my  view, 
what  has  been  a  chasm  in  earlier  theories. 

^  See  Chaps.  XIIT.  an  1  XIV.  for  the  discussion  of  the  Genesis  of  Volition  and 
Attention. 


3o8  Conscious  Imitation, 

§   3.     Assimilation,  Recognition. 

There  are  several  aspects  of  presentation  and  repre- 
sentation which  seem  more  reasonable  when  brought  into 
connection  with  our  present  topic.  The  principle  of  as- 
similation, made  much  of  in  recent  discussions,  clearly 
illustrates  not  only  that  a  copy-image  may  be  so  strong 
and  habitual  in  consciousness  as  to  assimilate  new  expe- 
riences to  its  form  and  colour,  but  also  that  this  assimila- 
tion is  the  very  mode  and  method  of  the  mind's  digestion 
of  what  it  feeds  upon.  Consciousness  constantly  tends 
to  neglect  the  unfit,  the  nial  apropos,  the  incongruous, 
and  to  show  itself  receptive  to  that  which  in  any  way 
conforms  to  its  present  stock.  A  child  after  learning 
to  draw  a  full  face  —  circle  with  spots  for  the  two  eyes, 
nose,  and  mouth,  and  projections  on  the  sides  for  ears 
—  will  persist,  when  copying  a  face  in  profile,  in  draw- 
ing its  circle,  with  two  eyes,  and  two  ears,  and  fail  to  see 
its  error,  although  only  one  ear  is  visible  and  no  eyes.^ 
My  child  H.  having  been  told  that  her  shadow  was  her- 
self, called  all  shadows  '  ittle  Henen  '  (little  Helen).  The 
external  pattern  is  assimilated  to  the  memory  copy,  or 
to  the  word  or  other  symbol  which  comes  to  stand  for  it. 
The  child  has  a  motor  reaction  for  imitating  the  latter  ; 
why  should  not  that  answer  for  the  other  as  well  1  As 
everybody  admits,  in  one  way  or  another,  such  assimilation 
is  at  the  bottom  of  recognition,  and  of  illusions  which  are 
but  mistaken  recognitions. 

Let  us  look  at  each  of  these  facts  —  assimilation  and 
recognition  —  more  closely,  from  the  genetic  point  of  view. 

In  what  has  been  said  of  the  principle  of  association,  we 

1  Passy,  Revue  Philos.,  1S91,  11. ,  p.  614. 


Assimilation,  Recognition.  309 

find  ground  for  the  reduction  of  its  particular  forms  to 
the  one  law  of  assimilation.  This  matter  has  been  ably 
discussed  by  Wundt.^  In  assimilation  —  and  in  the  'ap- 
perception '  of  the  Herbartians  —  we  have  the  general 
statement  of  all  the  forms,  nets,  modes  of  grouping,  which 
old  elements  of  mental  content  bring  to  impose  upon  the 
new.  In  the  light  of  their  motor  effects,  we  are  able  to 
construe  all  these  elements  of  content  under  the  s:eneral 
principle  of  habit,  and  say  that  the  assimilation  of  any  one 
element  to  another,  or  the  assimilation  of  any  two  or  more 
such  elements  to  a  third,  is  due  to  the  unifying  of  their 
motor  discharges  in  the  single  larger  discharge  which 
stands  for  the  apperceived  result.  The  old  discharge  may 
itself  be  modified  —  it  cannot  remain  exactly  as  it  was 
when  it  stood  for  a  less  complex  content.  So  this  larger 
discharge  represents  the  habit  of  the  organism  in  as  far  as 
both  the  earlier  tendencies  to  discharge  belonging  to  these 
elements  of  content  are  represented  in  it ;  but  it  also  rep- 
resents accommodation  —  i.e,  if  the  assimilation,  appercep- 
tion, synthesis,  is  smoothly  accomplished —  since  it  stands 
for  a  richer  objective  content.  Presentations  are  associated 
by  contiguity  because  they  unite  in  a  single  motor  dis- 
charge ;  by  similarity,  because  both  of  them,  through  their 
association  with  a  third,  have  come  to  unite  in  a  common 
discharge.  The  energy  of  the  new  presentation  process 
finds  itself  drawn  off  in  the  channels  of  the  discharo:e  of 
the  old  one  which  it  resembles  ;  the  motor  associations, 
therefore,  and  with  them  all  the  organic  and  revived  mental 
elements  stirred  up  by  them,  come  to  identify  or  unite 
the  new  content  with  the  old.  Among  these  revised  ele- 
ments the  attention  strains  are   of   the  first  importance  ; 

1  Philos.  Studien,  VII.,  heft  3,  pp.  345  ff. 


3IO  Conscious  Imitation. 

they  constitute  largely  the  sense  of  activity  in  mental 
synthesis  or  apperception  everywhere. 

It  is  commonly  held  that  assimilation  stands  midway 
between  absolute  identity  of  presentations,  on  the  one 
hand,  and  such  difference  of  presentations,  on  the  other 
hand,  as  is  found  in  the  relative  independence  of  asso- 
ciated ideas,  such  as,  for  example,  the  association  'stable  — 
horse.'  But  this  is  not  the  true  view  of  assimilation,  for 
there  is  no  such  thing  as  absolute  identity  of  presentation, 
or  of  mental  content  of  any  kind.  Assimilation  is  always 
present.  It  is  the  necessary  basis  of  the  earliest  associa- 
tion. For  association  is,  as  we  have  seen,  on  the  organic 
side  and  at  the  start,  only  another  statement  for  the  con- 
solidating of  the  different  reactions  which  arise  when  the 
stimulations  are  multiple  or  not  simple.  These  reactions 
are  reduced  to  orderly  habitual  discharges  —  this  is  associ- 
ation by  assimilation,  more  or  less  adequate  to  give  the 
sense  of  synthesis,  or  unity,  or  identity.  Association  has, 
accordingly,  a  motor  foundation  from  the  first.  The  ele- 
ments hold  together  in  memory  because  they  are  7ised 
together  in  action.  And  as  the  action  becomes  one,  but 
yet  complex,  so  the  mental  content  tends  to  become  one, 
but  yet  complex  also. 

This  becomes  more  evident  when  we  call  to  mind  that 
the  'objects '  of  the  external  world  are  very  complex  men- 
tal constructions.  They  are  for  the  most  part  made  by 
association.  Objects  have  some  very  general  aspects  in 
common,  such  as  colour,  resistance,  odour,  etc.  But  these 
bare  qualities,  taken  alone,  might  go  to  constitute  one 
object  about  as  well  as  another;  and  really  would  consti- 
tute none.  What  kind  of  an  object  such  or  such  a  bare 
stimulus  shall  turn  out  to  be  —  this  is  largely  a  matter  of 


Assimilation,  Rccog7iition,  311 

association  and  suggestion.  Hence  if  the  mind  has  to 
construct  anyhow,  in  each  case,  and  to  depend  largely 
upon  memory  of  earlier  instances  for  its  material,  then  it 
falls  back  at  once  upon  those  habitual  reactions  by  which 
groups  of  associated  elements  are  reinstated  together  and 
as  one  content.  These  old  groups  thus  usurp  the  new 
elements  by  assimilation,  if  it  be  within  the  range  of 
organic  possibility. 

Put  generally,  therefore,  we  may  say  that  assimilation 
is  due  to  the  tendency  of  a  new  sensory  process  to  be 
drawn  off  into  preformed  motor  reactions ;  these  preformed 
reactions  in  their  turn  tending  to  reinstate,  by  the  principle 
of  imitation,  the  old  stimulations  or  memories  which  led 
to  their  preformation,  with  all  the  associations  of  these 
memories.  These  memories,  therefore,  tend  to  take  the 
place  or  stand  for  the  new  stimulations  which  are  being 
thus  assimilated. 

All  perception  is  accordingly  a  case  of  assimilation. 
The  motor  contribution  to  each  presented  object  is  just 
beginning  to  be  recognized  in  cases  of  disease  called  by 
the  general  term  apraxia,  i.e.,  loss  of  the  sense  of  the  use, 
function,  utility,  of  objects.  A  knife  is  no  longer  recog- 
nized by  these  patients  as  a  knife,  because  the  patient  does 
not  know  Jioiv  to  use  it,  or  what  its  purpose  is.  The  com- 
plex system  of  elements  is  still  there  to  the  eye,  all  to- 
gether :  the  knife  is  a  thing  that  looks,  feels,  etc.,  so  and 
so.  This  is  accomplished  by  the  simple  contiguous  asso- 
ciation of  these  elements,  which  has  become  hardened  into 
nervous  habit.  But  the  central  link  by  which  the  object 
is  made  complete,  by  which,  that  is,  these  different  ele- 
ments were  originally  reproduced  together  by  being  imi- 
tated together  in  a  single  act,  —  this  has  fallen  away.     So 


312  Conscious  Imitation. 

the  apperception,  the  synthesis  which  made  the  whole 
complex  content  a  thing  for  recognition  and  for  use,  this 
is  gone. 

The  great  importance  of  this  fact  of  assimilation  be- 
comes more  evident  also  when  we  take  note  more  in  detail 
of  the  nature  of  the  motor  processes  by  which  it  takes 
place.  When  we  say  that  a  new  element  is  assimilated  to 
old  contents  by  exciting  the  motor  associates,  and  with 
them  all  the  other  entrained  associates  of  the  old,  we  lay 
ourselves  open  to  the  task  of  showing  what  the  motor 
processes  are  which  are  thus  established  by  habit  in  any 
particular  case. 

We  have  shown  that  in  a  developed  organism,  the 
'  excess '  discharge  which  secures  accommodation,  by  rein- 
stating a  stimulus,  takes  on  two  great  forms  by  the  law 
of  habit.  First,  we  have  the  gross  general  activities  of 
the  muscles,  reflexes,  utility  reactions  in  emotion,  etc. 
already  established ;  and  with  these,  second,  the  constant 
modifications  of  them  made  in  getting  new  acquisitions  of 
skill,  etc.  These  represent  respectively  biological  habit 
and  accommodation.  But  then  we  find  also  the  more 
special  kind  of  motor  reaction  upon  mental  content  found 
in  attention.  This  has  still  to  be  described  as  a  more  or 
less  consohdated  reaction  upon  mental  contents,  fixed  by 
habit.  We  shall  also  see,  in  considering  the  attention, 
how  it  is  that  every  mental  content  tends  to  call  out  the 
attention,  and  how,  in  turn,  the  attention  modifies  the  con- 
tent which  calls  it  out.  There  is,  therefore,  just  as  far  as 
this  reaction  of  attention  upon  content  is  a  constant  gen- 
eralized thing,  a  general  demand  for  the  assimilation  of  all 
contents  in  certain  great  nets  or  categories  representing 
forms  of  action  ;  and,  in  particular,  these  mental  categories 


Assimilation,  Recognition,  313 

are  due  to  felt  movements  of  the  attention.  This  may  be 
deferred  for  later  discussion.  But  this  is  not  all  of  the 
attention.  We  find  that  there  is  a  balance  of  attention 
process  —  reflex  motor  influence,  muscular  strains  here 
and  there  —  peculiar  to  each  great  quality  of  content,  as 
being  from  eye,  or  ear,  etc.,  and  inside  of  this,  again,  a 
balance  peculiar  to  each  particular  individual  content  ex- 
perienced. We  not  only  have  a  common  attention,  involv- 
ing the  brow-muscles,  etc.,  but  various  special  attentions, 
such  as  visual,  auditory,  etc.,  and  further,  different  succes- 
sive attentions  for  each  experience  of  the  same  quality, 
i.e.y  let  us  say  three  successive  repetitions  of  the  same 
sight.  If  A  be  the  gross  movements  of  attention,  a,  a\ 
a,"  a"  may  stand  for  the  peculiar  attentions  to  sight, 
sound,  etc.,  and  a,  a,  a\  a''  for  the  successive  acts  of  the 
attention  given  under  one  of  the  latter,  say  under  a. 

This  means  that  the  sense  of  assimilation  in  each  suc- 
cessive experience  of  the  same  objective  content  varies 
with  the  different  motor  shadings  of  attention,  just  as  it 
also  varies  for  the  different  sense  qualities  by  reason  of  the 
different  motor  associations,  strains,  etc.,  involved  in  accom- 
modating to  the  different  sense  qualities. 

Now  let  us  see  what  the  different  cases  are  which  will 
arise  in  successive  presentation  of  the  same  external  object. 
Let/  be  a  new  object,  a  peach.  A  +  a  -{-  a,  then,  by  what 
precedes,  stands  for  attention  to  it ;  in  which  A  gives  the 
sensations  of  gross  contraction,  a  gives  the  sensations  of 
special-sense  contractions,  such  as  rolling  of  the  eyes,  etc., 
and  a  gives  the  sensations  of  contraction  peculiar  to  this 
particular  object  only,  —  say  the  visual  exploration  of  its 
figure.  Now  all  this  works,  as  we  have  seen,  by  the  law 
of  assimilation,  changes  in  the  content  p  ;  /  gets  a  lot  of 


314  Conscious  Imitation. 

associates  attached  to  it  by  which  it  is  brought  into 
harmony  or  connection  with  earlier  /'s.  It  is  put  into  the 
category  P,  the  Peach. 

Now  suppose  that  instead  of  being  an  absolutely  new  p, 
this  /  has  been  seen  once  before  and  so  has  become  /'. 
Then  we  have  again  the  formula  for  attention,  A  -\-  a -\-  a , 
where  a  differs  from  the  former  a.  What  is  this  difference  ? 
In  consciousness  I  submit  the  difference  is  just  this,  that 
we  recognize  p\  Analyzed  out  as  it  has  now  been,  we  are 
able  to  see  what  this  peculiar  sense  of  recognition  rests 
on.  For  a  differs  from  a  in  two  respects  :  first,  in  the 
greater  ease  with  which  the  movements  of  the  eye,  etc., 
for  which  a  stands,  are  made  in  tracing  out  the  figure  of 
/'  (or  whatever  other  contractions  constitute  one  attention 
different  from  another  inside  the  same  sense-quality  — 
what  I  call  the  'motor  associates'  of/'),  and,  second,  in 
the  presence  of  the  images  belonging  to  the  earlier  expe- 
rience now  brought  up  in  regular  association.  As  to  the 
first  of  these  elements,  it  is  the  so-called  *  subjective  aspect' 
of  recognition  to  be  mentioned  below.  As  to  the  latter 
element,  it  is  evident  that  all  the  old  images  will  be  asso- 
ciated directly  with/'.  But  among  them  will  now  be  the 
image  of  memory  left  by  the  earlier  experience  of  /. 
With  this  the  new  /'  is  assimilated,  to  such  a  degree  that 
the  two  are  not  held  apart  at  all,  but  the  result  is  one 
object  under  the  category  P,  with  a  group  of  associated 
elements.     We  say,  then,  that  /'  is  recognized. 

Recognition,  therefore,  generally  involves  elements  of 
content  brought  together  by  the  process  of  assimilation,  and 
so  rests  upon  attention  considered  as  a  phenomenon  of 
motor  habit,  that  is,  upon  the  more  habitual  ingredients  in 
the  attention  symbolized  by  the  A  -^  a  part  of  the  whole 


Assifnilation,  Recognition.  315 

attention  formula.  The  objective  presented  elements  are 
of  course  most  evident  and  important.  Their  presence  is  in 
so  far  only  the  familiar  fact  of  association,  which  seems 
easy  to  understand  because  it  is  so  familiar.  But  associa- 
tion is  itself  a  case  of  looser  and  less  effective  assimilation. 
Every  two  elements  whatever,  connected  in  consciousness, 
are  so  only  because  they  have  motor  effects  in  co7mnon.  In 
association  they  have  less  in  common.  In  recognition 
they  have  so  much  more  in  common  that  they  are  pre- 
sented as  one,  and  the  other  elements  of  content  associated 
with  each  of  them  in  similar  ways  through  common  motor 
interests,  cluster  around  the  final  outcome  as  the  evident 
signs  of  the  sameness  of  the  new  and  the  old.  This  is 
the  fact  of  recognition  by  NebejivorstelliLugen  signalized  by 
Wundt,  under  which  falls  Lehmann's  Benemmngsassocia- 
tion.  It  is  what  may  be  called  recognition  by  an  objective 
coefficient  (H  off  ding's  BekanntJieitsqiLalitdt),  or  in  current 
phrase,  'relative  recognition.' 

I  have  before  gathered  up  this  side  of  recognition,  based 
both  upon  mental  analysis  and  objective  experiment,  in  a 
formula  which  holds  that  the  sense  of  familiarity  with  an 
object  is  due  to  the  reinstatement  of  the  apperceptive  or 
relational  process  of  the  earlier  presentation.^  According 
to  this  formula,  taken  alone,  single  unrelated  homogeneous 
images  such  as  bell-stroke,  pure  colour,  etc.,  would  not  be 
recognized,  single  complex  images  such  as  human  faces 
would  be  recognized  somewhat  in  the  degree  in  which  the 
complexity  had  impressed  itself  in  the  first  perception,  and 
clear  recognition  would  arise  only  when  the  relations  at- 
tentively discerned  were  clearly  brought  out  in  the  repro- 

1  Handbook  of  Psychology,  I.  Senses  and  Intellect,  2d.  ed.,  pp.  1 76-178, 
where  the  experiment  given  in  the  next  paragraph  is  also  mentioned. 


3i6  Conscious  Imitation, 

duced  state.  A  further  result  would  be  that  images,  when 
reproduced,  would  largely  depend  upon  and  reinforce  each 
other  in  producing  the  feeling  of  familiarity. 

I  once  had  an  opportunity  to  test  a  little  child  six 
months  and  a  half  old,  with  these  points  in  view,  and  the 
result  was  quite  instructive.  Her  nurse,  who  had  been 
with  her  continuously  for  five  months,  was  absent  for  a 
period  of  three  weeks,  and  on  her  return  was  instructed 
first  to  appear  to  the  child  simply  in  her  usual  dress,  but  to 
remain  silent ;  then  to  withdraw  from  sight,  but  to  speak 
as  she  had  been  accustomed  to ;  and  finally  to  appear  and 
sing  a  nursery  rhyme,  which  by  special  care  the  little  girl 
had  not  been  allowed  to  hear  during  the  nurse's  absence. 
The  first  result  was,  that  the  child  gazed  in  a  questioning 
way  upon  the  face,  but  showed  no  positive  sign  of  a  recog- 
nition ;  yet  the  absence  of  positive  fear  and  antipathy 
shown  at  first  toward  the  substitute  nurse  indicated  that 
the  visual  image  was  not  entirely  strange.  Second,  the 
tones  of  the  nurse's  voice  were  not  at  all  recognized,  as  far 
as  passive  indications  even  of  familiarity  were  concerned, 
—  a  result  we  would  expect  from  the  greater  purity  and 
simplicity  of  the  auditory  images.  The  third  experiment 
was  attended  by  complete  and  demonstrative  recognition. 
The  visual  face  and  auditory  rhyme  images  must  have  re- 
enforced  one  another,  giving  again  the  old  established 
complex  apperception  of  the  nurse. 

This  case  also  shows,  as  far  as  any  individual  case  can, 
that  images  from  different  senses  vary  greatly  in  intensity 
and  in  motor  effect,  especially  in  calling  out  influence  upon 
the  attention,  in  early  child-life,  that  they  are  not  well 
differentiated  from  one  another,  and  that  even  at  the  very 
early  age   of   six  months  special  memories  are  becoming 


Assimilation^  Recognition.  317 

sufficiently  permanent  to  fix  general  attitudes  and  habits 
of  action  in  the  child. 

Observations  are  largely  lacking  as  to  what  elements  in 
the  particular  experiences  of  early  childhood  are  most  in- 
fluential in  recognition.  Close  observations  of  the  periods 
when  children  recognize  pictures  of  familiar  objects  would 
throw  some  light  upon  the  point.  E.  recognized  pictures 
of  a  clock  and  a  cat  early  in  her  twelfth  month,  and  called 
them  '  ti-ti '  (tick-tick)  and  '  ps-ps  '  (puss-puss) ;  but  I  know 
of  no  other  exact  observations. 

But  it  is  clear  that  the  other  element  in  the  atten- 
tion-complex is  also  present.  There  is  a  change  in  the 
a  factor  itself  with  successive  appearances  of  the  same 
p  content.  This  is  not  itself  presented  as  part  of  the 
content,  for  it  only  appears  in  the  relative  ease,  facil- 
ity, of  attention  itself.  It  seems  to  attach  to  the  sub- 
ject, to  the  agent,  to  the  ego  who  attends,  not  to  the 
object  or  content.^  We  have  in  the  recognition  of  an 
object  not  only  the  identification  of  it  as  objectively  the 
same,  but  also  a  feeling  of  *  warmth,'  ownership,  self- 
reference.  We  do  not  recognize  a  thing  simply /^r  itself ; 
we  recognize  it /(?r  ourselves.  It  has  become  in  a  sense 
ours   by  having  been  present   to  us   before.     This  is  ac- 

1  Ward  {Mind,  July,  1893,  p.  353)  has  pointed  out  the  analogy  between  the 
feeling  of '  facility '  which  we  have  when  we  perform  a  movement  a  second  or 
third  time,  and  the  feeling  of  familiarity  with  an  object.  In  my  view,  they  are 
exactly  the  same  thing,  except  that  in  the  former  case  the  subjective,  i.e. 
motor,  sense  is  nearly  or  quite  the  whole  of  the  feeling.  In  object  recognition 
the'  objective  content  is  still  objective,  but  in  the  sense  of  motor  facility  the 
process  of  voluntary  attention  is  identified  directly  with  the  movement,  and 
finds  in  it  its  own  appropriate  outlet.  The  reader  should  also  consult  Ward's 
second  article  {Mind,  October,  1894),  which  appears  after  my  text  is  in  type. 
In  view  of  the  similarity  of  his  position  and  mine  I  may  add  that  my  view  was 
published  in  the  Philos.  Review  in  July,  1892. 


3i8  ConscioMS  Imitation, 

counted  for  by  the  fact  that  just  this  motor  element  it 
is  that  carries  along  with  it  the  habitual  attention  strains, 
and  these  attention  strains  are  in  large  part  the  stable, 
'identical'  element  in  the  sense  of  self.  So  self  becomes 
implicated  in  all  recognition  just  to  the  extent  in  which  the 
attention  is  easily  stimulated. 

Now,  although  we  have  found  the  objective  aspect  of 
recognition  in  the  represented  complexity  of  content  just 
spoken  of,  —  the  apperceptive  or  associative  meaning  of 
the  thing,  —  so  it  still  remained  to  find  the  more  uniform 
element  of  subjective  reference  common,  in  a  measure, 
to  different  recognitions.  This  I  find  in  the  varying 
readiness  or  ease  of  attention  in  the  reinstatement  of  the 
content  by  assimilation  to  its  old  image  and  escort ;  that 
is,  in  the  motor  sensations  of  adjustment,  which  indicate 
in  a  series  the  varying  degrees  of  strain  or  effort  of  the 
attention. 

The  motor  associates  of  each  sensory  intensity  are, 
therefore,  looked  at  broadly,  the  A  -\-  a  -{-  a  factors  in  at- 
tention, and  each  such  reaction  of  the  attention,  when 
taken  in  a  particular  case,  has  also  in  it  a  certain  degree 
of  readiness  or  ease  of  the  a  factor.  This  has  more  proof 
in  later  chapters  which  deal  with  'Attention,'  and  the 
conditions  of  '  Internal  Speech  and  Song.'  When  a 
presentation  comes  a  second  time  into  consciousness,  it 
is  adjusted  to  more  easily  because  its  apperception  in 
attention  proceeds  upon  a  basis  of  ready  formed  associa- 
tion of  both  these  kinds.  The  relative  ease  of  adjustment 
is  felt  as  the  subjective  aspect  of  recognition,  and  the 
consequent  assimilation  going  on  in  the  content  itself  is 
the  objective  aspect. 

Cases  are  now  well   known  and   discussed   of   so-called 


Its  Pliylogenctic    Value.  319 

'absolute'  recognition,  in  which,  i.c.y  there  are  no  evident 
presented  associations  to  mediate  the  recognition.  The 
vital  question  is  raised  :  How  do  such  recognitions  pro- 
ceed ?  The  two  clear  cases  known  are  the  recognition  of 
simple  tones,  and  that  of  simple  colours.  In  both  these 
cases,  as  is  now  evident,  the  recognition  is  due  to  the 
second  (a)  factor  which  I  have  brought  out  above  —  the 
relative  ease  of  attention  in  adjusting  itself  to  such  a  tone 
or  colour  a  second  time. 

§  4.    Phylogenetic  Value  of  Memory  and  Recognition. 

It  need  hardly  be  said  that  memory  is  a  function  of 
extraordinary  value  in  race  development.  Creatures  which 
have  in  them  the  faculty  of  anticipating  experiences, 
both  pleasurable  and  painful,  by  the  recall  of  memory 
pictures  in  something  of  the  original  setting,  and  which 
can,  in  consequence,  anticipate  the  actual  experiences  to 
secure  or  avoid  them  by  an  adapted  reaction,  are  most  fit 
for  natural  selection.  Of  course  they  survive.  This  has 
always  been  seen  by  those  writers  who  have  found  in 
memory  a  product  of  the  organic  accommodation  of  the 
creature  to  its  environment.  But  a  farther  word  is  neces- 
sary to  point  out  the  proper  value  for  selection  of  the 
added  fact  of  recognition.  For  a  creature  might  well 
reproduce  its  experiences  as  memory  pictures  and  react 
upon  them  well,  and  still  not  recognize  them,  just  as  pa- 
thology shows  is  the  case  in  certain  anaesthetic  hysterics. 
These  patients  respond  in  writing  to  questions  which  they 
do  not  understand,  or  describe  in  writing  persons  whom 
they  do  not  recognize.  The  whole  group  of  facts  of 
'physiological'  or   organic   suggestions    described    in    my 


320  Conscious  Imitation. 

earlier  pages  ^  show  the  kind  of  '  organic  memory '  which 
enables  the  organism  to  act  upon  an  experience  as  if  it 
recognized  it,  when  the  actual  recognition  does  not  take 
place  in  consciousness.  What  is  absent  in  these  cases  is, 
as  we  now  know,  the  finer  motor,  synthetic,  adjustments 
of  the  attention  which  by  their  variations  constitute 
recognition. 

The  adaptations  of  most  of  the  organisms  below  mam- 
malian life,  and  some 'mammals,  possibly,  take  place,  no 
doubt,  by  such  'organic  memory.'  They  have  conscious- 
ness and  also  memory  in  the  sense  of  recall  of  images  of 
past  experience ;  but  they  do  not  recognize  these  images 
with  that  peculiarly  '  warm  '  sense  of  ownership  which  we 
have  when  we  greet  the  familiar.  The  attention  has  not 
grown  to  be  the  medium  of  a  sense  of  self,  nor  has  its 
development  gone  far  enough  to  give  differentiated  re- 
actions to  many  contents.  They  have  what  may  be  called 
first  stage  associations  with  what  they  remember,  i.e.y  asso- 
ciations of  pleasure  and  pain,  and  of  direct  adjusted 
movement. 

The  additional  fact  of  recognition,  therefore,  must  have 
a  farther  value  than  that  of  simple  memory.  And  it  has, 
as  may  be  readily  pointed  out. 

By  the  recognition  of  an  object  a  creature  gets  full 
possession  of  all  the  benefits  both  of  immediate  and  of 
remote  association,  i.e.,  second-stage  association,  let  us  say. 
Recognition  follows  to  reinforce  or  inhibit  the  reaction 
of  simple  memory,  for  it  is  constituted  by  the  set-back 
wave  of  firm  motor  associates  already  described  as  neces- 
sary for  the  assimilation  of  the  new  to  the  old.  It  means, 
therefore,  that  the  creature  that  recognizes  takes  a  certain 

1  Above,  Chap.  VI.,  §  2. 


Its  Phylogcuetic    Value.  321 

attiUide,  a  motor  state  of  contraction,  expansion,  etc.,  a 
condition  of  readiness  for  the  protective  or  defensive 
action  for  which  the  motor  habits  of  the  organism  have 
grown  to  provide.  But  these  may  be  different  from  the 
reactions  dictated  by  simple  memory.  Recognition  is  a 
sense  of  meaning  as  opposed  to  that  of  bare  appearance, 
and  its  reaction  is  often  the  violent  checking  even  of  the 
impulses  due  to  more  organic  sensibility,  or  its  revival. 
Creatures  which  consciously  recognize,  therefore,  have  an 
evident  shield  from  the  ills  of  the  world  and  a  mortgage 
upon  its  benefits.  The  dog  which  sees  the  whip  only  for 
the  first  time  gets  the  flogging ;  but  the  next  time  he  sees 
the  whip,  he  recognizes  it  with  the  immediate  impulse  to 
startled  attention,  fear,  and  flight.  The  motor  elements 
which  underlie  are,  on  the  theory  now  developed,  what,  in 
his  consciousness,  is^  in  part,  the  sense  of  recognition.  I 
need  not  add  that  the  escape  of  the  dog  from  his  cruel 
master  is  the  survival  of  the  creature  that  is  fit  to  survive. 
Phylogenetically,  the  difference  in  value  between  mem- 
ory and  recognition  is  only  one  of  degree,  just  as  the 
motor  adjustments  and  the  escort  of  associates  of  all  kinds 
represented  in  the  two  cases  differ  only  in  degree  of 
co-ordination  and  complexity.  Memory  of  the  organic 
type,  without  recognition,  is  present  when  there  is  a  first- 
degree  association  between  two  sense  areas,  or  between 
a  sense  and  a  movement  area.  The  reaction  represents 
a  first-degree  accommodation.  But  in  recognition  we 
have  the  motor  organization  represented  by  attention  and 
complex  central  development  in  the  cortex.  Its  reactions 
therefore  represent  all  the  accommodations  of  skill  and 
art,  and  all  the  adjustments  of  will  to  the  demands  of 
the  life  of  conduct. 

Y 


CHAPTER    XI. 

Conscious    Imitation    (continued)  ;     the    Origin    of 
Thought  and  Emotion. 

§  I.    Conception  and  TJwught. 

Passing  on  to  the  sphere  of  conception  and  thought, 
we  find  a  remarkable  opening  for  the  law  of  imitation.  The 
principle  of  Identity  which  represents  the  mental  demand 
for  consistency  of  experience,  and  the  mental  tendency, 
already  remarked,  to  the  assimilation  of  new  material  to 
old  schemes,  is  seen  genetically  in  the  simple  fact  that 
repetitions  are  pleasurable  to  the  infant,  and  to  us  all, 
because  of  the  law  of  habit  in  our  reactions.  Just  in  as 
far  as  a  new  experience  repeats  an  old  one,  to  this  degree 
it  accomplishes  what  direct  imitation  would  have  accom- 
plished, and  so  makes  easy  future  repetitions  of  it,  by 
the  reaction  born  of  the  old.  This  kind  of  accommodation 
by  repetition  we  have  seen  to  be  both  indicative  of  pleas- 
ure, and  in  developed  organisms,  also,  the  cause  of  it. 
So  in  the  fact  of  assimilation,  we  have  both  the  method 
of  central  organic  development,  and  the  platform  upon 
which  the  structure  of  thought  must  be  built.  To  say  that 
identity  is  necessary  to  thought,  therefore,  is  only  to  say 
that  it  expresses  in  a  generalization  the  method  of  mental 
development  by  imitative  reaction. 

322 


Conception  and  ThongJil.  323 

In  my  earlier  work^  I  have  depicted  the  progress  of 
consciousness  through  the  operations  of  reasoning  —  con- 
ception, judgment,  syllogism  —  in  its  search  for  identities, 
and  I  need  not  enlarge  upon  it  here.  The  new  doctrine 
of  judgment,  which  goes  by  the  name  of  Brentano,  for 
the  first  time  did  justice  to  the  demand  for  unity  found 
everywhere  in  mental  operations.  Judgment  always  deals 
with  one  object,  not  two.  So  the  mental  demand  for 
identity  is  really  a  demand^  i.e.y  an  irresistible  tendency 
to  act  in  one  way  npon  a  variety  of  experiences.  Identity 
is  the  formal  or  logical  expression  of  the  principle  of 
Habit.  It  is  for  logic,  which  deals  with  units  and  copulas, 
what  smooth  assimilation  and  swift  apperception  are  for 
psychology,  which  deals  with  elements  and  processes. 

The  principle  of  Sufficient  Reason  is  subject  to  a  corre- 
sponding genetic  expression,  on  the  side  of  Accommoda- 
tion. Sufficient  reason,  in  the  child's  mind,  is  an  attitude, 
a  belief :  anything  in  its  experience  which  tends  to  modify 
the  course  of  its  habitual  reactions  in  a  way  which  it  must 
accept,  endorse,  believe  —  this  has  its  sufficient  reason, 
and  he  accommodates  to  it.  I  have  argued  elsewhere  ^ 
that  a  conflict  between  the  established,  the  habitual,  the 
taken  for  granted,  on  one  hand,  and  the  new,  raw,  and 
violent,  on  the  other  hand,  is  necessary  to  excite  doubt, 
which  is  the  preliminary  to  belief.  And  belief  follows 
only  when  a  kind  of  assimilation  or  reconciliation  takes 
place.  But  this  assimilation  of  the  new,  the  doubtful,  to 
the  old,  the  established,  is  only  done  by  the  union  of  the 
potencies  for  action,  in  a  common  plan  of  action.     Belief 

1  Handbook,  Vol.  I. ,  Senses  ajid  Intellect,  Chap.  XIV.  See  also  my  article 
Feeling,  Belief,  and  Judgment,  in  Mind,  N.  S.,  Vol.  I.,  p.  403. 

2  Handbook,  Vol.  II.,  Chap.  VII. 


324  Consciotis  Imitation. 

arises  in  the  child  in  the  readjustment  or  accommodation 
of  himself  actively  to  new  elements  of  reality.  Only  then 
does  he  pass  from  'reality-feeling,'  which  accompanies  un- 
impeded habit,  to  belief,  which  comes  from  a  new  adjust- 
ment of  the  claims  of  impeded  and  split-up  habits. 

In  as  far  as  there  is  truth  in  this  view,  in  so  far  does 
Sufficient  Reason  become  a  formal  or  logical  statement  of 
the  fact  of  Accommodation.  It  is  for  logic,  again,  what 
the  more  violent  reconciliations,  hard  bought  synthesis, 
strains  to  compass  all  in  a  single  'area  of  consciousness,' 
are  for  psychology. 

Put  more  broadly  :  whenever  we  believe  a  new  thing  or 
accept  it  as  real,  we  accommodate  our  attitude  to  its  pres- 
ence, we  make  place  for  it  in  our  store  of  acquisitions  for 
future  use ;  this  means  that  we  are  prepared  to  reproduce 
it  voluntarily  and  involuntarily,  to  make  it  a  part  of  that 
copy  system  which  hangs  together  in  our  memory,  as  rep- 
resenting a  consistent  course  of  conduct  and  the  best 
adjustment  we  have  been  able  to  effect  to  our  physical 
and  moral  environment.  And  on  the  other  hand,  anything 
which  cannot  get  into  this  system  is  not  believed  ;  and  we 
say  we  do  not  believe  it  because  it  lacks  just  in  this  suffi- 
cient ground  or  reason.  The  fact  is,  that  not  believing  a 
thing  simply  means  that  we  have  not  been  able  to  link  it 
up  and  hold  it  in  the  system  of  copy  elements  which  we 
have  established  by  long  and  patient  action. 

So  here  also  imitation  is  the  method  by  which  our  milieu 
of  thought  and  feeling  in  all  its  aspects  gets  carried  over 
and  reproduced  within  us  in  a  system  of  relationships  to 
which  we  have  learned  to  react.  We  live  by  faith,  now, 
not  by  sight,  because  we  depict  truth  in  these  relationships 
whose  very  establishing  by  our  own  action  has  given  us 


Cojucptioji  and  Thought.  325 

the  only  warrant  we  have  of  their  security.  Our  conscious- 
ness of  the  relationships  of  the  elements  of  this  reproduced 
world,  as  sustaining  one  another  —  and  sustaining  our  trust 
—  this  is  our  sense  of  sufficient  reason.  Our  accompanying 
sense  of  acceptance  and  endorsement  of  these  copies  as 
suited  to  draw  out  our  action  —  this  is  belief ;  and  the 
familiarity  which  repetition  engenders,  betokens  the  growth 
of  habit  and  the  sense  of  identity. 

Conception  then  arises,  too,  and  it  proceeds  by  identi- 
ties and  sufficient  reasons  ;  and  we  get  in  this  connection 
a  new  genetic  view  of  the  general  notion.  The  child 
begins  with  what  seems  to  be  a  general.  His  earliest 
experiences,  carried  over  into  memory,  become  general 
copies  which  stand  as  assimilative  nets  for  every  new 
event  or  object.  All  men  are  'papa,'  all  colours  are 
'wed,'  all  food  'mik.'  Professor  Cattell  informs  me  that 
his  little  girl,  after  getting  pain  from  certain  biniips  of 
head,  etc.,  got  to  calling  all  bodily  pain  'bump-bump.' 
And  her  little  brother  further  generalized  the  term  to 
apply  to  all  mental  discomforts,  such  as  disagreeable  emo- 
tions, fears,  etc.  What  this  really  means  is,  that  the  child's 
motor  attitudes  are  fewer  than  his  receptive  experiences. 
Each  experience  of  man  calls  out  the  same  attitude,  the 
same  incipient  movement,  the  same  coefficient  of  attention, 
on  his  part,  as  that,  e.g.,  with  which  he  hails  'papa.'  In 
other  words,  each  man  is  a  repetition  of  the  papa  copy, 
and  carries  the  child  out  in  action,  just  as  his  own  early 
response  to  the  presence  of  the  real  papa  carried  him  out. 
But  of  course  this  docs  not  continue.  By  his  learning  new 
accommodations,  by  his  having  experiences  which  will  not 
assimilate,  this  dominancy  of  habit  is,  in  part,  counteracted, 
his  classes  grow  more  numerous  as  his  reactions  do,  his 


326  Consciotts  Imitation. 

general  notions  become  more  'reasonable,'  and  he  is  on 
the  proper  way  to  a  *  rectification  of  the  concept.' 

The  ordinary  question  of  the  rise  of  the  *  concept '  from 
the  *  percept '  may,  accordingly,  get  its  answer  in  this 
view ;  and  it  is  well  to  go  a  little  more  into  details.  It 
is  only  partially  true  that  the  concept  arises  from  the  per- 
cept at  all.  It  is  rather  true  that  the  two  arise  together, 
by  the  same  mental  movement,  which  is  apperception  or 
motor  synthesis.  Going  back  again  to  that  neglected 
period,  infancy,  we  may  ask,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  what 
takes  place. 

Suppose,  after  the  very  common  method  of  the  day,  a 
single  presentation.  A,  in  the  infant  consciousness ;  then 
suppose  it  removed.  The  child  is  now  ready  to  germinate 
in  two  different  ways,  forward  and  backward,  future-ward 
and  past-ward.  He  remembers  and  he  expects.  Viewed  as 
memory^  his  experience,  A,  is  particular,  a  sensation,  after 
a  time  a  percept.  But  it  includes  more  than  his  simple 
receptive  state.  He  reacts  to  it,  and  so  stands  ready  to 
react  to  it  again.  This  readiness  is  his  expectation, — the 
only  tendency  he  has  to  a  definite  reaction  ;  and  as  the  only 
one,  it  stands  ready  to  'go  off'  on  any  kind  of  stimulus  which 
is  locally  near  enough  to  discharge  that  way.  His  mem- 
ory then  becomes  a  concept  after  a  fashion.  For  viewed 
as  expectation,  it  is  the  whole  of  the  child's  reality ;  it  is 
what  will  happen,  for  it  is  all  that  can  happen  ;  he  knows 
nothing  else.  Whatever  then  actually  does  happen  is  at 
first  reacted  to  as  A,  and  remains  A,  by  this  active  con- 
firmation, if  it  is  possible  for  the  child's  consciousness  to 
keep  it  A.  This  fact  that  past  experience,  taken  as  rep- 
resenting future  experience,  is  general,  I  may  call  the 
coficept  of  the  first  degree.     It  means   that   at   this  stage 


Conception  and  Thought.  327 

particular  experiences  are  the  measure  of  all  things,  of 
things  generatly ;  since  they  are  all  that  the  organism  is 
accommodated  to,  and  they  are  the  copies  to  which  all 
experiences  are  assimilated  if  possible.  The  child  is  under 
the  reign  or  habit  or  identity. 

But  as  particulars  increase,  they  limit  one  another,  both 
in  memory  and  in  expectation.  In  expectation,  because 
they  are  brought  only  partially  under  common  tendencies  of 
discharge  in  action  ;  in  memory,  because  by  this  tendency 
to  partial  disunion  in  action  they  are  subject  to  the  great 
processes  of  assimilation,  association,  and  inhibition.  In- 
stead of  A  (red  colour)  happening,  B  (green  colour)  happens ; 
and  instead  of  all  my  reds  being  red  squares,  and  all  my 
greens,  green  squares,  I  have  red  circles  and  green  circles, 
red  and  green  triangles,  fantastic  shapes  of  red  and  green, 
etc.  This  means  two  things  in  the  growth  of  concepts  :  first, 
that  my  expectation  is  no  longer  of  all  reds,  i.e.,  my  red 
is  no  longer  a  general  of  the  first  degree.  It  cannot,  by 
assimilation  through  a  single  motor  discharge,  stand  for 
all  colours.  Green  is  in  part  refractory.  So  red  is  now 
a  particular  as  compared  with  green.  And,  second,  my 
expectation  is  no  longer  that  all  my  reds  will  be  square, 
for  the  same  reason  as  before.  There  will  be  circular, 
triangular,  irregular  reds.  But  with  it  all  they  are  equally 
red.  In  this  respect  they  do  assimilate,  i.e.,  my  red  is 
still  general  as  compared  with  particular  instances  of  red. 
Now  this  particularizing  of  experiences  in  reference  to 
one  another  is  the  function  of  perception,  and  this  gen- 
eralizing of  experience,  with  reference  to  its  own  single 
instance,  is  conception,  which  gives  tJie  general  of  tJie  second 
degree.     So  conception  and  perception  arise  together. 

At  the  same  time,  experience  takes  on  another  psycho- 


328  Conscious  Imitation. 

logical  aspect.  New  experience  not  only  adds  new  items 
opposed  to  old  items,  but  it  leads  to  revision  of  the  old  — 
all  through  the  law  of  assimilation  by  means  of  motor 
reaction.  What  passed  for  greens  turn  out  to  be  partly 
blues ;  they  accordingly  require  and  secure  a  modified 
action  ;  so  in  my  expectation  of  greens,  I  may  no  longer 
accept  blues.  So  also  I  leave  out  the  demand  that  my 
greens  be  either  square,  or  circular,  or  triangular,  i.e.,  I 
leave  out  figure.  This  means  that  in  my  more  generalized 
motor  reaction  to  colour,  I  leave  out  the  more  special  eye 
explorations  which  contribute  the  figure-value  to  the  com- 
plex content.  Or,  to  give  a  more  concrete  example,  first, 
boat  is  boat,  with  spread  sails,  three  masts,  and  sailors  in 
the  rigging ;  then  sailors  are  dropped,  sails  and  masts  go, 
etc.  What  is  left  is  ordinarily  said  to  be  abstracted,  as,  for 
instance,  the  concept  colour,  a  quality  abstracted  from  par- 
ticular instances.  But  true  abstraction  is  not  a  singling 
out ;  it  is  rather  a  paring  down,  a  wearing  off,  an  erosion, 
due  to  the  progress  in  adjustment  which  the  organism  has 
been  able  to  effect  under  the  law  of  the  reduction  of 
motor  habits  by  compounding.^  Thus  is  reached  a  gen- 
eral i7i  tJie  thii'd  degree.  It  represents  that  which  is 
essential  in  an  experience,  not  only  as  tested  by  its  unin- 
terrupted recurrence  amid  shifting  and  drifting  details  ; 
but  more  especially  by  its  regular  calling  out  force  upon 
me  in  some  great  fixed  way  of  acting. 

How  experience  gets  collected,  related,  distinguished,  in 
this  way,  is  ordinarily  the  question  of  the  function  of  con- 

1  See  above,  Chap.  VIII.,  §  4.  The  reader  may  compare  the  treatment  of 
my  Handbook,  I.,  Senses  and  Intellect,  where  conception  is  discussed  from  the 
point  of  view  solely  of  conscious  content,  the  genetic  feature,  —the  motor 
habit  involved,  —  not  being  there  spoken  of. 


Conception  and  TJiought.  329 

sciousness  itself.  I  prefer  to  call  the  process  considered 
thus  as  mental  function,  apperception,  and  to  say  that  both 
the  percept  and  the  concept  arise  by  the  apperceptive 
function  of  consciousness,  to  which  I  have  given  a  genetic 
construction  in  the  earlier  pages.  They  become,  on  this 
view,  simply  different  aspects  of  one  thing  —  a  synthesis  of 
elements.  Looked  at  backward,  the  product  is  an  event,  a 
particular,  a  percept ;  looked  at  forward,  it  is  representative 
of  other  events,  a  general,  a  concept. 

We  are  now  able,  in  summing  up,  to  make  out  two 
important  points  for  psychology,  I  think.  First,  we  see 
that  this  so-called  apperception  is  genetically  the  simple 
fact  of  motor  habit,  with  the  assimilations  and  associations 
which  it  gives  rise  to.  Motor  habit  is  the  great  devouring 
thing  which  throws  its  arms  around  all  mental  details  and 
unifies  them  in  its  embrace.  The  most  refined  and  subtile 
form  of  it  takes  place  higher  in  attention.  Attention  is 
the  vehicle  of  apperception  ;  as  psychologists  now  agree  it 
supplies  the  'form'  to  every  'content.'  To  say  this,  how- 
ever, is  only  to  say  that  attention,  representing  as  it  does 
the  most  refined  and  most  central  forms  of  motor  reaction 
upon  revived  mental  content  —  that  its  adjustments  are 
the  medium  of  conception,  thought,  reasoning,  of  all  possi- 
ble groupings  and  arrangings  in  the  mind.  Thought, 
therefore,  exhibits  a  new  stage  in  motor  accommodation. 
It  shows  the  organism's  adjustments  to  the  relationships 
of  truth,  as  memory,  perception,  sensation,  show  its  adjust- 
ments to  those  of  fact.  The  mechanism  of  voluntary 
attention,  Jpy  which  this  selection  or  adjustment  proceeds, 
is  described  in  a  later  chapter. 

The  second  thing  which  may  now  be  said,  is  that  this 
view  shows  why  we  have  never  been  able  to  find  a  mental 


330  Conscious  Imitation. 

picture  or  content  for  a  *  general  notion.'  Attempts  at  this 
culminated  but  did  not  terminate  with  Hume.  It  is  evident 
that  the  'general'  or  'abstract'  is  not  a  content  at  all. 
It  is  an  attitude,  an  expectation,  a  motor  tendency.  It  is 
the  possibility  of  a  reaction  which  will  answer  equally  for  a 
great  many  particular  experiences.  As  far  as  there  are  the 
particular  images  which  Hume  pointed  out,  and  such  pro- 
cesses of  composition  as  those  made  much  of  by  Waitz, 
these  are  both  mere  partial  statements  of  the  associations 
and  assimilations  which  have  been  given  general  treatment 
in  the  exposition  above.^ 

§  2.    Conception  as  Class-recognition. 

From  what  has  been  said  of  the  formation  of  the  gen- 
eral notion,  its  relation  to  recognition  becomes  interesting. 
This  point  has  never  been  made  clear,  I  think,  on  any  of 
the  old  theories.  How  is  it  that  a  single  object  is  recog- 
nized as  belonging  to  the  class  which  is  covered  by  a 
general  concept }     It  is  evident  that  this  presents  a  dif- 

1  I  may  note  the  agreement  intimated  in  the  following  quotations  from  a 
Syllabus  of  Lectures  by  Professor  Royce  :  "  All  general  ideas  are  the  mental 
aspects  of  habits  of  response  in  presence  of  those  general  characters  of  things 
to  which  the  ideas  in  question  relate.  Without  motor  habits,  no  ideas"; 
"consciously  general  ideas  are  the  mental  aspects  of  deliberately  formed 
habits  of  response  to  the  general  characters  of  things;  and  for  that  very 
reason  are  modifiable  in  definite  ways,  and  are,  accordingly,  more  or  less  suc- 
cessfully adjustable  to  decidedly  novel  conditions.  Of  such  deliberate  habits 
of  response  the  processes  of  language  are  a  familiar  example."  "  These  attri- 
butes of  Deliberateness  and  Modifiability  are  in  general  due  to  the  Influence  of 
the  Imitative  P'unction.  For  imitation,  although  founded  on  instinct,  implies 
for  its  development  Deliberateness  and  Plasticity  of  adjustment.  Rational 
General  Ideas  are  therefore,  on  the  whole,  products  of  imitation,  are  the  mental 
aspects  of  imitative  motor  habits  of  response  to  the  socially  recognized  general 
aspects  of  things."  I  have  not  seen  any  development  of  these  positions,  by 
Mr.  Rovce. 


Conception  as  Class-recognition.  331 

ferent  phase  of  recognition  from  that  which  comes  to  view 
in  the  recognition  of  a  single  object  as  the  same  single 
object.  Calling  this  further  kind  of  recognition  '  class- 
recognition,'  we  find  it  now  possible  to  explain  it. 

We  found,  it  will  be  remembered,  convenient,  a  certain 
formula  in  speaking  of  the  elements  involved  in  attention  ; 
the  formula  A  -{-  a  -{-  a.  A  represents  the  fixed,  habitual, 
always-present  strains,  stresses,  organic  movings,  etc.,  in- 
volved in  every  act  at  attention.  This  element  involves 
the  stable  elements  of  the  sense  of  self,  and  so  carries 
self-recognition  or  personal  identity  in  all  acts  of  memory. 
This  is  the  extreme  case  of  recognition  on  the  habit  side. 
The  third  element,  a,  further,  has  already  been  seen  to 
give  us,  in  its  changes  from  one  to  another  experience  of 
the  same  object  or  content,  the  sense  of  recognition  at  the 
other  extreme,  the  accommodation  extreme,  the  absolute 
recognitions  to  which  objective  complexity  may  be  largely 
absent.  Now,  in  the  middle,  in  the  a  element,  we  find  the 
very  common  fact  of  class-recognition  accounted  for,  in 
the  main.  The  formation  of  class  notions  we  have  seen 
to  be  by  union,  coalescence,  and  motor  processes,  with 
assimilations  of  new  elements  of  content  to  old  habitual 
schemes.  Now  the  attention  is  directly  imphcated  in  all 
these  class  formations.  Indeed,  it  is  by  the  training  of 
attention  in  this  way  that  the  most  stable  class  divisions 
are  formed,  i.e.,  those  which  mark  off  the  great  quality- 
types  of  mental  processes.  One's  attention  is  visual,  or 
auditive,  or  motor,  as  it  gets  habitually  exercised  with  one 
or  other  of  the  senses.^  So  the  elements,  in  an  act  of 
attention,  which  arise  from  the  contractions  peculiar  to  one 

^  This  is  taken  up  in  some  detail  in  the  chapter  on  Attention  (Chap. 
XV.). 


33^ 


Conscious  Imitation. 


kind  of  content,  remaining  relatively  constant  for  all 
instances  of  that  kind  of  content,  give  us  the  recognition- 
coefficient  for  that  class.  I  recognize  a  visual  picture  as 
something  I  have  sce7i,  because  it  stirs  up  that  a  element 
of  attention  which  consists  in  the  motor  revivals,  reverbera- 
tions, etc.,  of  the  eye-brow,  frown-muscles,  scalp  shiftings, 
etc.,  peculiar  to  visual  attention.  Auditory  class-recog- 
nition proceeds,  similarly,  upon  revived  auditory  attention- 
strains,  etc.  So  we  have  in  the  a  element  in  the  attention 
formula,  sufficient  explanation  of  class-recognition,  and  of 
its  position  midway  between  recognition  of  self  and  recog- 
nition of  single  objects,  qtia  single.  Of  course,  as  Wundt 
says,  just  in  as  far  as  a  single  object  is  recognized  as  com- 
plex, and  by  reason  of  its  complexity,  just  so  far  it  tends 
to  become  a  case  of  class-recognition  ;  inasmuch  as  the 
relationships  inside  of  which  its  assimilation  proceeds  are 
common  nets  for  a  possibly  varied  filling. 

The  three  recognition  phenomena,  therefore,  which  my 
scheme  sets  in  order  are,  self-identity  {A),  the  great 
ground-swell  of  organic  habit,  and  mental  sameness  ;  class- 
recognition  {a)y  covering  the  wide  objective  side,  the  con- 
tents subject  to  association  or  assimilation;  and  absolute 
recognition  (a),  the  refined  adjustments  in  which  present 
functional  elements  are  paramount.  The  motor  formula 
for  attention,  then,  adds  up  these  three  elements,  all  of 
which  are  simply  facts  of  attention,  giving  A  -\-  a  -\-  a. 

§  3.    Emotion  and  Sentiment} 

Again,  in  the  affective  life  we  find  evidence  of  the 
working    of   the    imitative    principle.     Emotion    we    have 

1  The  balance  of  this  chapter,  and  the  next  (Chap.  XIT.),  give  en  resuj?i'' 
positions  whicli  are  developed  as  topics  of  independent  and  practical  value  in 


EmofioJi  ajid  Soitinicnt.  333 

seen  to  be,  largely,  in  its  qualitative  marks,  a  revival 
product,  a  clustering,  so  to  speak,  of  organic  and  muscular 
reverberations  about  revived  elements  of  content.  So  the 
production  of  emotion  depends  upon  the  reinstatement,  by 
association  or  action,  of  parts  of  the  ideal  copy  system 
which  it  is  the  function  of  memory  and  association  to 
build  up  and  to  preserve.  This  follows  from  what  we 
have  said  in  two  earlier  discussions,  that  on  the  nature 
of  emotion,  and  that  on  the  organic  basis  of  memory  and 
association. 

There  is,  however,  one  class  of  emotions  which  show 
more  clearly  the  fact  that  the  framework  of  ideas  to  which 
emotion  attaches  is  really  a  product  of  imitation  ;  these 
are  the  sympathetic  emotions.  Sympathy  may  be  called 
the  imitative  emotion  par  excellence.  My  child  H.  cried 
out  when  I  pinched  a  bottle-cork  in  her  fifth  month,  and 
wept  in  her  twenty-second  week,  at  the  sight  of  a  picture 
of  a  man  sitting  weeping,  with  bowed  head  in  his  hands, 
and  his  feet  held  fast  in  stocks.^  In  such  cases  the  pres- 
entation is  assimilated  to  memory  copies  of  personal  suffer- 
ing, and  so  calls  out  the  motor  attitudes,  /.^.,  the  emotions, 
habitual  to  experiences  of  pleasure-  or  pain-giving  objects. 
And  the  motor  discharges,  each  time  that  they  are  re- 
peated, become  better  defined  and  more  telling  upon 
consciousness. 

In  many  cases,  however,   I  think  the  associative  order 

the  later  volume  of  '  Interpretations.'  They  are  given  here  under  the  general 
head  of  imitation,  in  order  to  make  passibly  complete  the  applications  of  the 
imitative  principle  ;  in  this  way  also  the  treatment  of  the  other  volume  is  ren- 
dered somewhat  less  theoretical. 

1  This  is,  I  own,  a  remarkably  early  recognition  of  a  pictorial  rendering 
of  expression;  but  I  have  the  date  recorded.  The  picture  will  be  found  on 
page  227  of  Bissell's  Biblical  Antijuities. 


334  Co7iscioiis  Imitation. 

in  the  sympathetic  emotions  is  the  reverse  of  this.  The 
sight  of  the  expression  of  emotion  in  another  stimulates 
similar  attitudes  directly  in  us,  and  this  in  turn  is  felt  as 
the  state  which  usually  accompanies  such  a  reaction.  The 
two  cases  of  sympathy  in  my  child,  given  above,  illustrate 
the  truth  of  both  these  accounts. 

The  sympathetic  emotion,  in  fact,  shows  the  'circular' 
form  of  reaction.  The  motor  attitude  seen,  we  may  say,  is 
itself  the  copy  which  tends  to  bring  about  its  own  duplica- 
tion in  the  person  seeing  it.  And  all  emotion  has  the  same 
origin  as  this.  The  '  expression  '  of  fear,  for  example,  is  a 
reinstatement  of  motor  and  organic  disturbances  which 
were,  first  of  all,  utility  reactions  upon  a  stimulation.  But 
all  utility  reactions  upon  a  stimulation  are  simply  those 
elements,  in  a  larger  diffused  'excess'  discharge,  which  were 
selected  just  because  they  were  fitted  to  maintain  or  avoid, 
as  the  case  may  be,  a  particular  kind  of  stimulation.  So 
just  in  as  far  as  the  position  is  valid  that  all  adapted 
movements  are  illustrations  of  the  fundamental  vital  adap- 
tations represented  by  reaching-out  and  drawing-in  move- 
ments, just  so  far  all  the  revivals  of  them,  which  break 
into  consciousness  as  emotion,  are  imitative  in  their  origin. 

There  are,  further,  two  or  three  special  illustrations  of 
this  function  of  imitation  in  the  genesis  of  emotion  so 
clear  in  the  making,  in  children,  that  I  shall  briefly  trace 
them.  First  let  us  consider  the  sense  of  self,  with  its 
remarkable  group  of  emotions. 

I  have  described  in  an  earlier  place  the  kind  of  responses 
which  infants  make  in  the  presence  of  persons,  and  the 
main  facts  may  be  here  recalled.  We  have  seen  that  one 
of  the  most  remarkable  tendencies  of  the  very  young  child 


Emotion  and  Sentiment.  335 

in  its  responses  to  its  environment  is  the  tendency  to 
recognize  differences  of  personality.  It  responds  to  what 
I  have  called  *  suggestions  of  personality.'  As  early  as 
the  second  month,  it  distinguishes  its  mother's  or  nurse's 
touch  in  the  dark.  It  learns  characteristic  methods  of 
holding,  taking  up,  patting,  kissing,  etc.,  and  adapts  itself, 
by  a  marvellous  accuracy  of  protestation  or  acquiescence, 
to  these  personal  variations.  Its  associations  of  person- 
ality come  to  be  of  such  importance  that  for  a  long  time 
its  happiness  or  misery  depends  upon  the  presence  of 
certain  kinds  of  'personality  suggestion.'  It  is  quite  a 
different  thing  from  the  child's  behaviour  towards  things 
which  are  not  persons.  Things  get  to  be,  with  some  few 
exceptions  which  are  involved  in  the  direct  gratifica- 
tion of  appetite,  more  and  more  unimportant ;  things  get 
subordinated  to  regular  treatment  or  reaction.  But  per- 
sons get  constantly  more  important,  as  uncertain  and 
dominating  agents  of  pleasure  and  pain.  The  fact  of 
movement  by  persons  and  its  effects  on  the  infant  seem 
to  be  the  most  important  factor  in  this  peculiar  influence ; 
later  the  voice  gets  to  stand  for  a  person's  presence,  and 
at  last  the  face  and  its  expressions  equal  the  person,  in 
all  his  attributes. 

I  think  this  distinction  between  persons  and  things, 
between  agencies  and  objects,  is  the  child's  very  first  step 
toward  a  sense  of  the  qualities  which  distinguish  persons. 
The  sense  of  uncertainty  or  lack  of  confidence  grows 
stronger  and  stronger  in  its  dealings  with  persons  —  an 
uncertainty  contingent  upon  the  moods,  emotions,  miaiices 
of  expression,  and  shades  of  treatment,  of  the  persons 
around  it.  A  person  stands  for  a  group  of  experiences 
quite  unstable   in    its   prophetic   as   it   is  in   its   historical 


33^  Coiiscioics  hnitation. 

meaning.  This  we  may,  for  brevity  of  expression,  as- 
suming it  to  be  first  in  order  of  development,  call  the 
^projective  stage '^  in  the  growth  of  the  personal  con- 
sciousness, which  is  so  important  an  element  in  social 
emotion. 

Further  observation  of  children  shows  that  the  instru- 
ment of  transition  from  such  a  'projective'  to  a  subjective 
sense  of  personality,  is  the  child's  active  bodily  self,  and 
the  method  of  it  is  the  principle  of  imitation.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  accommodation  by  actual  muscular  imitation  does 
not  arise  in  most  children  until  about  the  seventh  month, 
so  utterly  organic  is  the  child  before  this,  and  so  great  is 
the  impetus  of  its  inherited  instincts  and  tendencies.  But 
when  the  organism  is  ripe,  by  reason  of  cerebral  develop- 
ment, for  the  enlargement  of  its  active  range  by  new 
accommodations,  then  he  begins  to  be  dissatisfied  with 
'projects,'  with  contemplation,  and  so  starts  on  his  career 
of  imitation.  And  of  course  he  imitates  persons.  Persons 
have  become,  by  all  his  business  with  them  and  theirs 
with  him,  his  interesting  objects,  the  source  of  his  weal 
or  woe,  his  uncertain  factors.  And  further,  persons  are 
bodies  which  move.  And  among  these  bodies  which  move, 
which  have  certain  projective  attributes,  as  already  de- 
scribed, a  very  peculiar  and  interesting  one  is  his  own 
body.  It  has  connected  with  it  certain  intimate  features 
which  all  others  lack.  Besides  the  inspection  of  hand  and 
foot,  by  touch  and  sight,  he  has  experiences  in  his  con- 
sciousness which  are  in  all  cases  connected  with  this  body, 
—  strains,  stresses,  resistances,  pains,  etc.,  —  an  inner 'felt 

1  See  the  detailed  observations  and  analysis  of  these  '  personal  projects,' 
above,  Chap.  VI.,  §  3.  The  use  of  the  word  '  project '  is  justified  in  the  earlier 
connection. 


Emotion  and  Sentiment.  2)Z1 

series  matching  the  outer  presented  series.  But  it  is  only 
when  a  new  kind  of  experience  arises  which  we  call  effort 

—  a  set  opposition  to  strain,  stress,  resistance,  pain,  an 
experience  which  arises,  I  think,  first  as  imitative  effort 

—  that  there  comes  that  great  line  of  cleavage  in  his 
experience  which  indicates  the  rise  of  volition,  and  which 
separates  off  the  series  now  first  really  subjective.  Persist- 
ent imitation  with  effort  is  typical  case  of  explicit  voli- 
tion, and  the  first  germinating  nucleus  of  self-hood  over 
against  object-hood.  Situations  before  accepted  simply, 
are  now  set  forward,  aimed  at,  wrought ;  and  in  the  fact 
of  aiming,  working,  the  fact  of  agency,  which  we  have 
found  to  arise  from  the  child's  realization  of  the  possible 
capriciousness  of  character,  is  the  nascent  sense  of  sub- 
ject.^ 

The  subject  sense,  then,  is  an  actuating  sense.  What 
has  formerly  been  'projective'  now  becomes  'subjective.' 
The  associates  of  other  personal  bodies,  the  attributes 
which  made  them  different  from  things,  are  now  attached 
to  his  own  body  with  the  further  peculiarity  of  actuation. 
This  we  may  call  the  subjective  stage  in  the  growth  of  the 
self-notion.  It  rapidly  assimilates  to  itself  all  the  other 
elements  by  which  the  child's  own  body  differs  in  his 
experience  from  other  active  bodies,  —  the  passive  inner 
series  of  pains,  pleasures,  strains,  etc.  The  self  suffers  as 
well  as  acts.  All  get  set  over  against  lifeless  things,  and 
against  living  bodies  which  act,  indeed,  but  whose  actions 

1  It  is  in  exhibition  of  this  new  sense  of  agency,  or  power  over  its  own 
actions,  ivith  their  suggcstiveness  to  others,  that  the  child's  first  conscious 
deceptions,  'lies,'  appear;  and  these  lies  are  generally  of  great  value  as  being 
the  means  of  bringing  out,  in  its  earliest  forms,  the  originality  and  invention 
of  the  boy  or  girl.  I  shall  give  instances  of  this  with  *  Interpretations,'  in 
detail,  in  my  proposed  volume. 

Z 


338  ConscioMs  Imitation, 

do  not  contribute  to  his  own  sense  of  actuation  or  of 
suffering. 

Again,  it  is  easy  to  see  what  now  happens.  The  child's 
subject  sense  goes  out  by  a  kind  of  return  dialectic,  which 
is  really  simply  a  second  case  of  assimilation,  to  illuminate 
these  other  persons.  The  project  of  the  earlier  period  is 
now  lighted  up,  claimed,  clothed  on  with  the  raiment  of 
self-hood,  by  analogy  with  the  subjective.  The  projective 
becomes  ejective ;  that  is,  other  people's  bodies,  says  the 
child  to  himself,  have  experiences  in  them  such  as  mine 
has.  They  are  also  me  s :  let  them  be  assimilated  to  my 
me  copy.  This  is  the  third  stage ;  the  ejective,  or  'social* 
self,  is  born.i 

The  ego  and  the  alter  are  thus  born  together.  Both  are 
crude  and  unreflective,  largely  organic,  an  aggregate  of 
sensations,  prime  among  which  are  efforts,  pushes,  strains, 
physical  pleasures  and  pains.  And  the  two  get  purified 
and  clarified  together  by  this  twofold  reaction  between 
project  and  subject,  and  between  subject  and  eject.  My 
sense  of  myself  grows  by  imitation  of  you,  and  my  sense 
of  yourself  grows  in  terms  of  my  sense  of  myself.  Both 
ego  and  alter  are  thus  essentially  social  ;  each  is  a  sociiis, 
and  each  is  an  imitative  creation.  So  for  a  long  time 
the  child's  sense  of  self  includes  too  much.  The  circum- 
ference of  the  notion  is  too  wide.  It  includes  the  infant's 
mother,  and  little  brother,  and  nurse,  in  a  literal  sense  ; 
for  they  are  what  he  thinks  of  and  aims  to  act  like,  by 
imitating,  when  he  thinks  of  himself.  To  be  separated 
from  his  mother  is  to  lose  a  part  of  himself,  as  much  so  as 

1  I  think  an  adequate  apprehension  of  the  distinctions  conveyed  by  the 
three  words  *  projective,'  'subjective,'  and  'ejective,'  would  banish  the  popular 
'  psychologists'  fallacy '  beyond  recall. 


Emotion  and  Sentiment,  339 

to  be  separated  from  a  hand  or  foot.  And  he  is  dependent 
for  his  growth  directly  upon  these  suggestions  which  come 
in  for  imitation  from  his  personal  viilieii} 

It  will  be  seen  by  readers  of  R.  Avenarius,^  that  the  two 
stages  of  this  development  correspond  to  the  two  stages 
in  his  process  of  Introjection,  whereby  the  '  hypothetical ' 
(personal-organic)  element  of  the  naturlicJien  Weltbegriff 
is  secured.  Avenarius  finds,  from  analytical  and  anthrop- 
ological points  of  view,  a  process  of  'attribution,'  read- 
ing-in  {Einlcgung),  by  which  a  consciousness  comes  to 
interpret  certain  peculiarities  attaching  to  those  items  in 
its  experience  which  represent  organisms  and  afterwards 
persons.  The  second  stage  is  that  whereby  these  peculi- 
arities get  carried  back  and  attached  to  its  own  organism 
{Selbstei7itegting),  and  recognized  as  'subjective'  (sen- 
sations, perceptions,  thoughts),  in  both  organisms,  over 
against  the  regular  '  objective '  elements  contained  in  the 
rest  of  the  world  experience. 

This  genera]  doctrine  of  Avenarius  finds  better  justifica- 
tion than  he  gives  it,  I  think,  from  the  genetic  sphere,  into 
which  he  does  not  go.  The  two  phenomena,  '  personality 
suggestion'  and  'imitation,'  supply  just  the  support  for  a 
revised  doctrine  of  '  Introjection.'  First  comes  what  I 
have  called,  in  what  precedes,  the  'projective'  stage  of  the 
self-notion.      It  is  the  stage  in  which  the  infant  gets  'per- 


^  Prof.  Josiah  Royce  has  expressed,  in  an  article  in  the  Philosophical 
Review,  November,  1894,  a  view  of  the  growth  of  the  self-notion  in  the  child's 
consciousness  in  close  agreement,  in  most  points,  with  this;  and  I  take  pleas- 
ure in  referring  to  his  development  as  something  similar  to  that  which  my 
own  detailed  statement  will  be  in  my  later  volume.  My  present  text  appeared, 
in  much  the  same  words  as  now,  in  Mind  iox  January,  1894,  and  was  thought 
out  some  months  before  I  wrote  it  out,  in  October,  1S93,  for  that  journal. 

-  Kritik  der  reinen  Erfahrung,  and  also  Der  menschlichc  Weltbegriff. 


340  Co7iscioics  Imitation. 

sonality  suggestions.'  It  is  simply  the  infant's  way  of 
getting  *  more  copy '  of  a  peculiar  kind  from  the  personal 
element  in  its  objective  surroundings.  The  second  stage 
is  secured  by  imitation.  The  child  reproduces  the  copy 
thus  obtained,  consisting  of  the  physical  signs  and,  through 
them,  of  the  mental  accompaniments.  Here  the  imitation 
of  emotional  expressions  has  its  great  influence.  By  this 
reproduction  it  'interprets'  its  projects  as  subjective  in 
itself,  and  then  refers  them  back  to  the  'other  person' 
again,  with  all  the  gain  of  this  interpretation.  Avenarius, 
as  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  discover,  has  no  means  of 
passing  from  the  first  to  the  second  stage,  from  project  to 
subject.  He  speaks^  of  a  certain  confusion  (  VerzvecJiseliing) 
of  the  projective  experience  {T-ErfaJirmig)  with  the  remain- 
ing personal  elements  in  consciousness  {M-Erfahmiig)  : 
but  what  the  true  leading-thread  into  this  '  confusion  '  and 
out  of  it  is,  he  does  not  note.  This  is  just  what  I  claim  it 
is  the  function  of  imitation  to  do ;  it  supplies  the  bridge 
with  two  reaches.  It  enables  me  —  the  child  —  to  pass 
from  my  experience  of  what  you  are,  to  an  interpretation 
of  what  I  am  ;  and  then  from  this  fuller  sense  of  what  I 
am,  back  to  a  fuller  knowledge  of  what  you  are.^ 

1  Der  menschliche  Weltbegriff,  §  51,  p.  30,  and  §  95,  p.  49. 

2  In  the  use  of  the  two  facts,  '  personality  suggestion '  and  *  imitation/  my 
development  is  quite  unindebted  to  Avenarius,  v/ho  writes  from  the  point  of 
view  of  race  history  and  criticism.  I  do  not  adopt  the  word  '  introjection,' 
since  it  covers  too  much.  My  word  'project'  signifies  the  child's  sense  of 
others'  personality  before  it  has  a  sense  of  its  own.  The  rest  proceeds  by  imi- 
tation. This  distinction  of  method  raises  a  further  question  which,  as  1  have 
already  said  (Chap.  I.),  should  be  carefully  discussed  in  all  problems  for  which 
a  genetic  solution  is  sought,  i.e.,  how  far  the  genetic  process  itself  in  the  indi- 
vidual's growth  has  become  a  matter  of  race  habit  or  instinct.  That  is,  granted 
a  process  of  origin  correctly  depicted,  to  what  extent  must  we  say  that  each 
new  individual  of  the  race  passes  through  it  hi  all  its  details?  The  origin  of 
impulse  and  instinct  illustrate  the  effects  of  habit  in  abbreviating  these  pro- 


Eviotioji  and  Sentiment.  341 

Further,  this  process  of  taking  in  elements  from  the 
social  world  by  imitation  and  giving  them  out  again  by  a 
reverse  process  of  invention  (for  such  the  sequel  proves 
invention  to  be  :  the  modified  way  in  which  I  put  things 
together  in  reading  the  elements  which  I  get  from  nature 
and  other  men,  back  into  nature  and  other  men  again)  — 
this  process  never  stops.  We  never  outgrow  imitation, 
nor  our  social  obligation  to  it.  Our  sense  of  self  is  con- 
stantly growing  richer  and  fuller  as  we  understand  others 
better  —  as  we  get  into  social  co-operation  with  them, — 
and  our  understanding  of  them  is  in  turn  enriched  by  the 
additions  which  our  own  private  experience  makes  to  the 
lessons  which  we  learn  from  them.  These  and  other 
aspects  of  social  emotion,  which  come  to  mind  in  con- 
nection with  this  amazingly  suggestive  topic,  must  be 
reserved. 1 

I  think  some  light  falls  on  the  growth  of  ethical  feeling, 
also,  from  the  psychology  of  imitation,  although  I  must 
again  disclaim  adequacy  of  treatment.  The  two  principles, 
habit  and  imitative  accommodation,  seem  to  get  appli- 
cation on  this  higher  plane :  the  plane  which  is  the  theatre 
of  the  rise  of  moral  sentiment.  Moral  sentiment  arises 
evidently  around  acts  and  attitudes  of  will.  It  is  accord- 
ingly to  be  expected  that  the  account  of  the  genesis  of 
volition  will  throw  some  light  upon  the  conditions  of  the 

cesses  and  starting  the  individual  from  points  of  higher  vantage.  I  am  not 
prepared  to  say  that  an  isolated  child,  for  example,  might  not  get  a  high  self- 
notion  (as  he  might  learn  to  speak  somehow)  if  deprived  of  all  social  sugges- 
tions; but  that  fact  would  be  subject  to  explanation  as  part  of  the  'learning' 
which  is  the  outcome,  on  a  large  scale,  of  the  very  genetic  process  which  it 
appears  to  supersede. 

1  See,  however,  Chap.  XII.  In  my  later  work  I  hope  to  discuss  this;  and 
also  the  higher  aspect  of  '  Recapitulation '  referred  to  in  the  preceding  note. 


342  Conscious  Imitation. 

rise  of  conscience.  So  if  it  be  true  that  present  character 
is  the  deposit  of  all  former  reactions  of  whatever  kind,  and 
that  what  we  call  will  is  a  general  term  for  our  concrete 
acts  of  volition,  and  further  that  volition  represents  a 
co-ordination  of  tendencies,  then  according  as  these  ten- 
dencies are  suggestions  from  other  persons,  on  the  one 
hand,  and  represent  partial  expressions  of  one's  own  per- 
sonal character  on  the  other  hand,  there  arises  a  division 
within  that  sense  of  voluntary  agency  which  is  the  germ  of 
the  notion  of  self.  Your  suggestion  to  me  may  conflict 
with  my  desire ;  my  desire  may  conflict  with  my  own  pres- 
ent sympathy.  Self  meets  self,  so  to  speak.  The  self  of 
accommodation,  imitation,  the  self  that  learns,  collides  with 
the  self  of  habit,  of  character,  the  self  that  seeks  to  domi- 
nate. It  is  no  longer  a  matter  of  simple  habit  vej'stis  sim- 
ple suggestion,  as  is  the  case  in  infancy,  before  the  self 
gets  the  degree  of  complexity  which  constitutes  it  a  vol- 
untary agent,  as  a  later  chapter  shows.  It  is  now  that 
form  of  habit  which  is  personal  agency,  coming  into  con- 
flict with  that  form  of  suggestion  which  is  also  personal  to 
me  as  representing  my  social  self.  Your  example  is  pow- 
erful to  me  intrinsically  ;  not  because  it  is  abstractly  good 
or  evil,  but  because  it  represents  a  part  of  myself,  inasmuch 
as  I  have  become  what  I  am  in  part  through  my  sympathy 
with  you  and  imitation  of  you.  So  your  injunctions  to  me 
bring  out  a  difference  of  motor  attitude  between  what  is 
socially  responsive  in  me,  in  a  sense  public,  and  that  which 
is  relatively  me  alone,  my  private  self. 

When  I  come  to  a  new  moral  situation,  therefore,  my 
state  is  this,  in  each  case  —  and  we  shall  see  as  we  go  on 
that  it  is  yet  more  :  I  am  in  a  condition  of  relative  equilib- 
rium, or  balance  of  two  factors,  my  personal  or  habitual 


Emotion  and  Sentiment.  343 

self,  and  my  social  suggestive  self.  Your  wife  announces 
to  you  that  you  are  to  go  to  a  reception  given  by  Mr.  A. 
*  Hang  Mr.  A. !  '  is  your  first  reply  — that  of  your  habitual 
private  self.  But  your  wife  says,  "  Some  one  of  the  family 
should  be  there,  and  besides  I  want  to  go."  This  is  an 
appeal  to  your  family,  public,  social  self  in  its  broad  sense, 
supplemented  by  an  appeal  to  your  sympathetic,  narrower, 
conjugal  self.  The  new  decision  which  you  make  tends  to 
destroy  this  equilibrium  by  reinforcing  your  '  copy '  and 
its  influence  in  your  character,  on  one  side  or  the  other, 
and  so  to  lead  you  out  for  further  habit  or  for  new  social 
adaptations. 

And  now  on  this  basis  comes  a  new  mental  movement 
which  seems  to  me  to  involve  a  further  development  of  the 
imitative  motif —  a  development  which  substitutes  warmth 
and  life  for  the  horrible  coldness  and  death  of  that  view 
which  identifies  voluntary  morality  with  submission  to  a 
'word  of  command.'  The  child,  it  is  true,  very  soon 
comes  across  that  most  tremendous  thing  in  its  moral 
environment  which  we  call  authority  ;  and  acquires  that 
most  magnificent  thing  in  our  moral  equipment  which  we 
call  obedience.  He  acquires  obedience  in  one  of  two  ways, 
or  both  :  by  suggestion,  or  by  punishment.  The  way  of 
suggestion  is  the  higher  way ;  because  it  proceeds  by 
gradual  lessons  in  accommodation,  until  the  habit  of  regu- 
larity in  conduct  is  acquired,  in  opposition  to  the  capricious- 
ness  of  his  own  reactions.  It  is  also  the  better  way 
because  it  sets  before  the  child  in  an  object  lesson  an 
example  of  that  stability  and  lawfulness  which  it  is  the 
end  of  all  obedience  to  foster.  Yet  punishment  is  good 
and  often  necessary.  Punishment  is  nature's  way  ;  she 
inflicts  the  punishment  first,  and    afterwards    nurses    the 


344  Conscious  Imitation. 

insight  by  which  the  punishment  comes  to  be  understood. 
A  child's  capricious  movement  may  bring  a  pain  which 
represents  all  the  organic  growth  of  the  race  ;  and  so  when 
we  punish  a  child's  capricious  conduct,  we  are  letting  fall 
upon  him  the  pain  which  represents  all  the  social  and 
ethical  growth  of  the  race.  But  by  whatever  method, — • 
suggestion  or  punishment, — the  object  is  the  same:  to 
preserve  the  child,  until  he  learns  from  his  own  habit  the 
insight  which  is  necessary  to  his  own  salvation  through 
intelligent  submission. 

But  whether  obedience  comes  by  suggestion  or  by  pun- 
ishment, it  has  this  genetic  value  :  it  leads  to  another 
refinement  in  the  sense  of  self,  at  first  'projective,'  then 
subjective.  The  child  finds  himself  stimulated  constantly 
to  deny  his  impulses,  his  desires,  even  his  irregular  sympa- 
thies, by  conforming  to  the  will  of  another.  This  other 
represents  a  regular,  systematic,  unflinching,  but  reason- 
able personality  —  still  a  person,  but  a  very  different  per- 
son from  the  child's  own.  In  the  analysis  of  '  personality 
suggestion,'  we  found  this  stage  of  the  child's  apprehension 
of  persons  —  his  sense  of  the  regularity  of  personal  char- 
acter in  the  midst  of"  the  capriciousness  that  before  this 
stood  out  in  contrast  to  the  regularity  of  mechanical  move- 
ment in  things.  There  are  extremes  of  indulgence,  the 
child  learns,  which  even  the  grandmother  does  not  permit ; 
there  are  extremes  of  severity  from  which  even  the  cruel 
father  draws  back.  Here,  in  this  dawning  sense  of  the 
larger  limits  which  set  barriers  to  personal  freedom,  is 
the  *  copy  '  forming,  which  is  his  personal  authority  or  law. 
It  is  'projective,'  because  he  cannot  understand  it,  cannot 
anticipate  it,  cannot  find  it  in  himself.  And  it  is  only  by 
imitation   that   he   is   to   reproduce  it,  and  so  arrive  at  a 


Emotion  aiid  Sentiment.  345 

knowledge  of  what  he  is  to  understand  it  to  be.  So  it  is  a 
'  copy  for  imitation.'  It  is  its  aim  — so  may  the  child  say 
to  himself,  —  and  should  be  mine  —  if  I  am  awake  to  it, — 
to  have  me  obey  it,  act  like  it,  think  like  it,  be  like  it  in 
all  respects.  It  is  not  I,  but  I  am  to  become  it.  Here  is 
my  ideal  self,  my  final  pattern,  my  *  ought '  set  before  me. 
My  parents  and  teachers  are  good  because,  with  all  their 
differences  from  one  another,  they  yet  seem  to  be  alike  in 
their  acquiescence  to  this  law.  Only  in  as  far  as  I  get 
into  the  habit  of  being  and  doing  like  them  in  reference  to 
it,  get  my  character  moulded  into  conformity  with  it,  only 
so  far  am  I  good.  And  so,  like  all  other  imitative  func- 
tions, it  teaches  its  lesson  only  by  stimulating  to  action. 
I  must  succeed  in  doing  —  he  finds  out,  as  he  grows  older 
and  begins  to  reflect  upon  right  and  wrong,  —  if  I  would 
understand.  But  as  I  thus  progress  in  doing,  I  forever 
find  new  patterns  set  for  me  ;  and  so  my  ethical  insight 
must  always  find  its  profoundest  expression  in  that  yearn- 
ing which  anticipates,  but  does  not  overtake,  the  ideal.^ 

My  sense  of  moral  ideal,  therefore,  is  my  sense  of  a 
possible  perfect,  regular  will,  taken  over  /;/  me,  in  which 
the  personal  and  the  social  self  —  my  habits  and  my  social 
calls,  —  are  brought  completely  into  harmony ;  the  sense  of 
obligation  in  me,  in  each  case,  is  a  sense  of  lack  of  har- 
mony —  a  sense  of  the  actual  discrepancies  in  my  various 
thoughts  of  self,  as  my  actions  and  tendencies  give  rise  to 
them.  To  pursue  my  commonplace  illustration,  your  wife 
adds  to  the  reasons  for   your  attending  the  reception  of 

1  A  further  important  aid  to  the  child  in  this  development  is  his  observation 
of  the  vi'ay  that  other  people  behave  to  one  another  in  his  presence.  —  On  the 
nature  of  'ideals'  and  the  rise  of  conceptual  emotion,  in  which,  in  my  view, 
the  sense  of  ideals,  as  being  ideal,  really  consists,  see  my  Handbook  of 
Psychology,  Vol.  II.,  Chap.  IX. 


346  Conscious  Imitation. 

Mr.  A.,  this  one  :  'And  besides,  you  ought  to  go  out  more.* 
This  is  the  profoundest  reason  of  all ;  not  because  it  has 
in  it  the  word  'ought,'  merely,  but  because  it  makes  appeal 
to  the  ideal  self,  before  the  law  of  which  all  the  earlier 
claims  have  their  lesser  or  greater  value. 

And  then,  once  more,  the  thought  of  this  ideal  self, 
made  ejective,  as  it  must  be  by  the  dialectic  of  this  germi- 
nating social  sense,  put  out  of  and  beyond  me  —  this  is 
embodied  in  the  moral  sanctions  of  society,  and  finally 
in  God.^ 

The  value  of  the  ejective  sense  of  moral  self  is  seen  in 
the  great  sensitiveness  we  have  to  the  supposed  opinions 
of  others  about  our  conduct.  It  is  an  ingredient  of  extraor- 
dinary influence.  From  the  account  given  of  the  rise  of 
the  sense  of  obligation,  we  should  expect  the  two  very 
subtle  aspects  of  this  sensitiveness  which  are  actually 
present.  First,  in  general,  our  dread  and  fear  before 
another's  fancied  opinion  is  in  direct  proportion  to  our  own 
sense  of  self-condemnation.  Consciousness  is  clear  on 
this  point.  It  must  be  so  if  it  is  true  that  our  sense  of 
self-condemnation  is  of  social  origin,  i.e.,  arises  from  our 
imitative  response  to  the  well-sanctioned  opinions  and  com- 
mands of  others.     But  second,  the  intelligent  observation 

1  I  can  only  mention  here  Hegel's  remarkable  treatment  of  the  genetic 
development  of  the  ethical  and  religious  sense  (^Philosophy  of  Mind.,  Sect.  II.), 
altogether  the  best  ever  written,  in  my  opinion.  My  facts,  as  I  hope  to  show 
in  another  place,  give  support  to  Hegel's  intuitions.  —  On  the  distinctively 
social  function  of  imitation,  Tarde  and  Sighele  both  dwell  in  the  works 
named,  the  latter  endeavouring  to  lay  the  foundations  of  a  science  of  '  collec- 
tive psychology.'  A  similar  task  is  set  in  my  later  volume.  As  to  religious 
emotion,  it  is  astonishing  enough  that  the  law  of  imitation  should  reach  so  far 
as  to  touch  those  mysterious  '  ideas  of  reason '  which  have  so  long  baffled  meta- 
physics. But  —  why  should  it  not  ?  Is  not  the  cry  'Anthropomorphism  !  '  as 
old  as  Xenophanes?     And  is  it  not  a  plea  for  or  against  imitation? 


Emotion  and  Sentiment.  347 

of  the  opinions  of  others,  and  the  suffering  of  the  penal- 
ties of  social  law,  react  back  constantly  to  purify  and 
elevate  the  standard  which  one  sets  himself,  just  as  they 
originally  stimulated  its  rise.  There  is,  therefore,  a  con- 
stant progress  from  the  action  and  reaction  of  society 
upon  the  individual  and  the  individual  upon  society.  And 
religious  sanctions  get  much  of  their  force,  it  seems  to  me, 
in  just  this  same  way. 

Josiah  Royce^  has  distinguished  between  the  two  earlier 
phases  of  self  which  I  have  pointed  out,  but  does  not 
develop  the  third.  Yet  he  indicates  clearly  and  with 
emphasis  the  twofold  element  of  conflict  under  which  the 
moral  sense  develops.  The  ordinary  accounts  on  the 
natural  history  side,  from  Darwin ^  to  the  present,  simply 
describe  a  conflict  in  consciousness  between  sympathy  and 
selfishness.  This  fails  to  do  justice  to  the  'law'  element, 
which  moralists  justly  emphasize,  in  the  genesis  of  moral- 
ity. It  gives  no  standard  of  values,  no  scale  for  the  esti- 
mation of  the  worths  of  the  impulses  which  represent 
temporary  and  changing  selves.  I  should  go  farther  than 
Royce  does  in  emphasizing  this  element,  believing  as  I  do 
that  there  is  no  full  sense  of  oughtncss  until  the  child  gets 
the  basis  of  a  Jiabit,  which  not  only  calls  upon  him  to  deny 
his  private  selfishness  in  favour  of  sympathy,  but  also 
his  private  sympathies  in  favour  of  reasonable  regularity 
learned  through  submission.  The  opposition,  that  is,  be- 
tween my  regular  personal  ideal  and  all  else, — whether  it  be 
the  regularity  of  my  selfish  habit  or  the  irregularity  of  my 
generous  responses,  —  this  is  the  essential  condition  of  the 
rise  of  obligation.     And  it  is  in  as  far  as  this  ought-feeling 

^  International  Joiirn.  of  Ethics,  July,  1893,  p.  430. 
2  Descent  of  Man,  Part  I.,  Chap.  III. 


348  Conscious  Imitation. 

goes  out  beyond  the  copy  elements  drawn  from  actual  in- 
stances of  action,  and  anticipates  better  or  more  ideal 
action,  that  the  antithesis  between  the  '  ought '  and  the 
*is'  gets  psychological  justification. 

The  question,  finally,  whether  obedience  is  a  case  of 
imitation,^  is  a  matter  of  words.  It  is  imitation,  in  the 
large  sense  of  the  term.  As  far  as  the  copy  set  in 
the  'word  of  command'  is  reproduced,  the  reaction  is  imi- 
tative. A  child  cannot  obey  a  command  to  do  what  he 
does  not  know  how  to  do.  The  circumstances  of  his 
doing  it,  however,  the  forcible  presentation  of  the  copy  by 
another  person,  this  seems  only  to  add  additional  elements 
to  the  copy  itself,  not  to  be  in  any  sense  an  interference,  or 
a  prevention  of  the  due  operation  of  imitation.  The  child 
has  in  view,  when  he  obeys,  not  only  the  thing  he  is  to 
do,  but  the  circumstances  —  the  consequences,  the  punish- 
ment, the  reward  —  and  these  also  he  seeks  to  reproduce 
or  to  avoid.  On  the  other  hand,  it  may  well  be  asked 
whether  all  of  our  voluntary  imitations  and  actions  gen- 
erally, are  not,  in  a  sense,  cases  of  obedience ;  for  it  is  only 
when  an  idea  gets  certain  suggestive  force,  or  sanctions,  or 
social  setting,  that  it  is  influential  in  bringing  us  out  for 
its  reproduction.  Of  course  this  is  only  further  play  on 
definitions  ;  but  it  serves  to  indicate  the  real  elements  in 
the  situation.  When  Tonnies  says  that  obedience  comes 
first  and  imitation  afterwards,  he  refers  to  voluntary  imita- 
tion of  a  particular  action  which  the  child  has  already 
learned  to  do.  But  the  whole  theory  of  his  learning  must 
go  before,  and  it  could  hardly  be  said  that  the  child  learned 
to  do  a  thing  at  first  simply  by  being  commanded  to  do  it. 

1  See  discussion  by  Tarde,  loc.  cit.,  and  Paulhan,  Revue  Philosophiqiie, 
August,  1890,  p.  179;  also  Tonnies,  Phjlosophische  Alonaishefte,  1893,  p.  308. 


CHAPTER    XII. 

Conscious  Imitation  (concluded). 

§  I.    Classification. 

It  is  possible,  on  the  basis  of  the  preceding  develop- 
ments, to  lay  out  a  scheme  of  notions  and  terms  to  govern 
the  discussion  of  the  whole  matter  of  imitation.  This  has 
been  the  'loose  joint'  in  many  discussions;  the  utter  lack 
of  any  well-defined  limits  set  to  the  phenomena  in  ques- 
tion. Tarde  practically  claims  all  cases  of  organic  or  social 
resemblance  as  instances  of  imitation,  overlooking  the 
truth,  as  one  of  his  critics  takes  pains  to  point  out,  that 
two  things  which  resemble  each  other  may  be  common 
effects  of  the  same  cause !  Others  are  disposed  to  con- 
sider the  voluntary  imitation  of  an  action  as  the  only 
legitimate  case  of  imitation.  This,  we  have  seen,  has  given 
rise  to  great  confusion  among  psychologists.  We  have 
reason  to  think  that  volition  requires  a  finely  complex 
system  of  copy  elements,  whose  very  presence  can  be  ac- 
counted for  only  on  the  basis  of  earlier  organic,  or  cer- 
tainly ideo-motor,  imitations.  Further,  it  is  the  lower, 
less  volitional  types  of  mind  that  simple  imitation  char- 
acterizes, the  undeveloped  child,  the  parrot,  the  idiot,  the 
hypnotic,  the  hysterical.  If  again  we  say,  with  yet  others, 
that  imitation  always  involves  a  presentation  or  image  of 
the  situation  or  object  imitated,  —  a  position  very  near  the 

349 


350  Conscio2is  Imitation. 

popular  use  of  the  term,  —  then  we  have  great  difficulty  in 
accounting  for  the  absorption  and  reproduction  of  subcon- 
scious, vaguely  present  stimulations  ;  as,  for  example,  the 
acquisition  of  facial  expression,  the  contagion  of  emotion, 
the  growth  of  style  in  dress  and  institutions  —  what  may 
be  called  the  influence  of  the  'psychic  atmosphere.' 

I  think  we  have  found  reason  from  the  analysis  above, 
to  hold  that  our  provisional  definition  of  imitation  is  just; 
an  imitative  reaction  is  one  which  tends  normally  to  main- 
tain or  repeat  its  own  stimulating  process.  This  is  what 
we  find  the  nervous  and  muscular  mechanism  suited  to,  and 
this  is  what  we  find  the  organism  doing  in  a  progressive 
way  in  all  the  types  of  function  which  we  have  passed  in 
review.  If  this  is  too  broad  a  definition,  then  what  I  have 
traced  must  be  given  some  other  name,  and  imitation 
applied  to  any  more  restricted  function  that  can  be  clearly 
and  finally  marked  out.  But  let  us  give  no  rein  to  the 
fanciful  and  strained  analogies  which  have  exercised  the 
minds  of  some  of  the  French  writers  on  imitation. 

Adhering  then  to  the  definition  which  makes  of  imita- 
tion an  organic  type,  we  may  point  out  its  various  '  kinds,' 
according  to  the  degree  in  which  a  reaction  of  the  general 
type  has,  by  complication,  abbreviation,  substitution,  inhi- 
bition, or  what  not,  departed  in  the  development  of  con- 
sciousness from  its  typical  simplicity.  We  find,  in  fact, 
three  great  instances  of  function,  all  of  which  conform  to 
the  imitative  type.  Two  of  these  have  already  been  put 
in  evidence  in  detail ;  the  third  I  am  going  on  to  charac- 
terize briefly  in  the  following  section  under  the  phrase 
*  plastic  imitation.' 

First :  the  organic  reaction  which  tends  to  maintain, 
repeat,   reproduce,   its  own  stimulation,   be  it  simple  con- 


Classification .  351 

tractility,  muscular  contraction,  or  selected  reactions  which 
have  become  habitual.  This  may  be  called  biological  or 
organic  imitation.  Under  this  head  fall  all  cases  lower 
down  than  the  conscious  picturing  of  copies  ;  lower  down 
in  the  sense  of  not  involving,  and  never  having  involved, 
for  their  execution,  a  conscious  sensory  or  intellectual  sug- 
gesting stimulus,  with  the  possibility  of  its  revival  as  a 
memory.  On  the  nervous  side,  such  imitations  may  be 
called  subcortical ;  and  in  view  of  another  class  mentioned 
below,  they  may  be  further  qualified  as  primarily  sub- 
cortical. 

These  *  biological'  imitations  are  evidently  first  in  order 
of  development,  and  represent  the  gains  or  accommoda- 
tions of  the  organism  made  independently  of  the  conscious 
reception  of  stimulations  and  adaptation  to  them.  They 
serve  for  the  accumulation  of  material  for  conscious  and 
voluntary  actions.  In  the  young  of  the  animals,  their  scope 
is  very  limited,  because  of  the  complete  instinctive  equip- 
ment which  young  animals  bring  into  the  world  ;  but  in 
human  infants  they  play  an  important  part,  as  the  means 
of  the  gradual  reduction  to  order  and  utility  of  the  dif- 
fused motor  discharges  of  the  new-born.  I  have  noted  its 
presence  under  the  phrase  '  physiological '  suggestion  ^  in 
another  place.  It  is  under  this  head  that  the  so-called 
'selective'  function  of  the  nervous  system  finds  its  first 
illustration. 

Second  :  we  pass  to  psychological,  conscious,  or  cortical 
imitations.  The  criterion  of  imitation  —  the  presence  of 
a  copy  to  be  aimed  at — is  here  fulfilled  in  the  form  of 
conscious  sensations  and  images.  The  copy  becomes  con- 
sciously available  in  two  ways  :  first,  as  sensation,  which 

1  Above,  Chap.  VI.,  §  2. 


352  Conscioiis  Imitatioii. 

the  imitative  reaction  seeks  to  continue  or  reproduce  (as 
the  imitation  of  words  heard,  movements  seen,  etc.) ;  and 
second,  as  memory.  In  this  latter  case  there  arises  com- 
plexity in  the  'copy  system,'  with  desire,  in  which  there  is 
consciousness  of  the  imitative  tendency  as  respects  an 
agreeable  memory  copy ;  and  with  the  persistence  of  such 
a  copy,  and  its  partial  repression  by  other  elements  of 
memory,  comes  volition.  We  find,  accordingly,  two  kinds 
of  psychological  or  cortical  imitation,  which  I  have  called 
respectively  'simple'  and  'persistent'  imitation.  Simple 
imitation  is  the  sensori-motor  or  ideo-motor  suggestion 
which  tends  to  keep  itself  going  by  reinstating  its  own 
stimulation  ;  and  persistent  imitation  is  the  '  try-try- 
again  '  experience  of  early  volition,  taken  up  in  more  de- 
tail below.  1 

Third  :  a  great  class  of  facts  which  we  may  well  desig- 
nate by  the  term  'plastic'  or  'secondarily  subcortical' 
imitations,  to  which  more  particular  attention  may  now  be 
given. 

§  2.    Plastic  Imitation. 

This  phrase  is  used  to  cover  all  the  cases  of  reaction  or 
attitude,  toward  the  doings,  customs,  opinions  of  others, 
which  once  represented  more  or  less  conscious  adaptations 
either  in  race  or  in  personal  history,  but  which  have  be- 
come what  is  ordinarily  called  'secondary  automatic'  and 
subconscious.  With  them  are  all  the  less  well-defined 
kinds  of  response  which  we  make  to  the  actions,  sugges- 
tions, etc.,  of  others,  simply  from  the  habit  we  are  in,  by 
heredity  and  experience,  of  conforming  to  social  'copy.' 
Plastic  imitation  represents  the  general  fact  of  that  normal 

1  Cf.  Chap.  XIII. 


Plastic  l77titation.  353 

suggestibility  which  is,  as  regards  personal  rapport y  the  very 
soul  of  our  social  relationships  with  one  another. 

These  cases  come  up  for  detailed  discussion  in  my 
later  volume.  They  serve  to  put  in  evidence  the  foun- 
dation, facts  of  a  possible  psychology  of  masses,  crowds, 
organized  bodies  generally.  They  may  be  readily  ex- 
plained by  one  or  both  of  two  principles  —  both  really  one, 
that  of  Habit.  The  principle  of  Mapsed  links,'  already 
explained,  applies  to  cases  of  conventional  conformity,  or 
custom,  which  is  but  an  expression  for  abbreviated  pro- 
cesses of  social  imitation.  This  accounts  for  the  influence 
of  the  old,  the  venerated,  the  antique,  upon  mankind. 
The  other  principle  is  the  application  of  habit  itself  to  imi- 
tation, whereby  absorption  by  imitation  has  become  the 
great  means,  the  first  resort  of  consciousness,  in  the  pres- 
ence of  new  kinds  of  experience.  We  have  become  used 
to  getting  new  accommodations,  fine  outlets  for  action  and 
avenues  of  happiness,  by  taking  up  new  thoughts,  beliefs, 
fashions,  etc.  This  accounts  for  the  tyranny  of  novelty 
in  all  social  affairs.  So  in  these  two  principles,  both  exhi- 
bitions of  the  one  law  of  imitation,  we  reach  the  two  great 
forces  of  social  life,  conservatism  and  liberalism.  So  we 
find  under  this  heading  such  fundamental  facts  as  the 
social  phenomena  of  contagion,  fashion,  mob-law,  which 
Tarde  and  Sighele  so  well  emphasize,  the  imitation  of 
facial  and  emotional  expression,  moral  influence,  organic 
sympathy,  personal  rapport,  etc.,  all  matters  set  aside  for 
later  treatment.  The  term  *  plastic '  serves  to  point  out 
the  rather  helpless  condition  of  the  person  who  imitates, 
and  so  interprets  in  his  own  action  the  more  intangible 
influences  of  his  estate  in  life. 

The  general  character  of  plastic  imitation  may  be  made 
2  A 


354  Conscious  Imitation. 

clearer  if  I  draw  attention  to  some  of  its  more  obscure 
instances,  and  assign  them  places  in  the  general  scheme  of 
development. 

The  social  instances  noticed  at  length  by  Tarde,  and 
summarized  under  so-called  'laws/  are  easily  reduced  to 
the  more  general  principles  now  stated.  Tarde  enunciated 
a  law  based  on  the  fact  that  people  imitate  one  another 
in  thoughts  and  opinions  before  they  do  so  in  dress  and 
customs,  his  inference  being  that  '  imitation  proceeds  from 
the  internal  to  the  external.'  As  far  as  this  is  true  it  is 
only  partially  imitation.  Thoughts  and  opinions  are  imi- 
tated because  they  are  most  important  and  most  difficult 
to  maintain  for  oneself.  And  it  is  only  a  result  of  similar 
thought  that  action  should  be  similar,  without  in  all  cases 
resorting  to  imitation  to  account  for  this  last  similarity. 
But  the  so-called  facts  are  not  true.  The  relatively  trivial 
and  external  things  are  most  liable  to  be  seized  upon.  A 
child  imitates  persons,  and  what  he  copies  most  largely  are 
the  personal  points  of  evidence,  so  to  speak  ;  the  boldest, 
most  external  manifestations,  the  things  that  he  with  his 
capacity  is  most  likely  to  see,  not  the  inner  essential  men- 
tal things.  It  is  only  as  he  grows  to  make  a  conscious  dis- 
tinction between  thought  and  action  that  he  gets  to  giving 
the  former  a  higher  valuation.  And  so  it  is  in  the  differ- 
ent strata  of  society.  The  relative  force  of  convention, 
slavish  imitation,  worship  of  custom,  seems  to  have  some 
relation  to  the  degree  of  development  of  a  people. 

Again,  Tarde's  laws  relative  to  imitation  mode  and  imita- 
tion coiitttme  —  the  former  having  in  its  eye  the  new,  fash- 
ionable, popular,  the  fad  ;  the  latter,  the  old,  venerable, 
customary  —  are  so  clearly  partial  statements  of  the  prin- 
ciples of  accommodation  and  habit,  as  they  get  application 


Plastic  Imitation,  355 

on  the  broader  genetic  scale  that  I  have  briefly  pointed 
out,  that  it  is  not  necessary  to  dwell  further  upon  them.^ 

The  phenomena  of  hypnotism  illustrate  most  strikingly 
the  reality  of  this  kind  of  imitation  at  a  certain  stage  of 
mental  life.  Delboeuf  makes  it  probable  ^  that  the  charac- 
teristic peculiarities  of  the  '  stages '  of  the  Paris  school  are 
due  to  this  influence  ;  and  the  wider  question  may  well  be 
opened,  whether  suggestion  generally,  as  understood  in 
hypnotic  work,  might  not  be  better  expressed  by  some 
formula  which  recos-nizes  the  fundamental  sameness  of  all 
reactions  —  normal,  pathological,  hypnotic,  degenerative 
—  which  exhibit  the  form  of  stimulus-repeating  or  '  circu- 
lar' process  characteristic  of  simple  imitation.  In  normal, 
personal,  and  social  suggestion  the  copy  elements  are,  in 
part,  unrecognized;  and  their  reactions  are  subject  to 
inhibition  and  blocking-off  by  the  various  voluntary  and 
complicated  tendencies  which  have  the  floor.  In  sleep, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  copy  elements  are  largely  sponta- 
neous images,  thrown  up  by  the  play  of  association,  or 
stimulated  by  outside  trivialities,  and  all  so  weak  that 
while  action  follows  in  the  dream  persons,  it  does  not 
generally  follow  in  the  dreamer's  own  muscles.  But  in 
hypnotic  somnambulism,  all  copy  elements  are  from  the 
outside,  thrown  in  ;  the  inner  fountains  are  blocked ; 
action  tends  to  follow  upon  idea,  whatever  it  is.  Even 
the  idea  of  no  action  is  acted  out  by  the  lethargic,  and  the 
idea  of  fixed  self-sustaining  action  by  the  cataleptic.^ 

1  Tarde's  other  principle,  that  '  inferiors  imitate  superiors,'  is  clearly  a 
corollary  from  the  view  that  the  progressive  ideal  personality  arises  through 
social  suggestion  in  some  such  way  as  we  have  traced  above. 

^  Revtie  Philosophiqiie,  XXII.,  pp.  146  ff. 

8  It  may  be  well  to  quote  Janet's  summary  of  his  determinations  of  the 
characteristic   features   of  general   catalepsy,  all   of  which   indicate  a  purely 


356  ConscioiLS  Imitation. 

Further,  in  certain  cases  of  madness  (fotie a  deux,  etc.)  the 
patient  responds  to  the  copy  which  has  been  learned  from  a 
single  person  only,  and  has  aided  perhaps  in  the  production 
of  the  disease.^  In  all  these  cases,  the  peculiar  character 
of  which  is  the  performance,  under  conditions  commonly 
called  those  of  aboulia,^  of  reactions  which  require  the 
muscular  co-ordinations  usually  employed  by  voluntary 
action,  we  have  illustrations  of  '  plastic '  imitation.  On 
the  pathological  side,  we  find,  in  aphasic  patients  who 
cannot  write  or  speak  spontaneously,  but  who  still  can 
copy  handwriting  and  speak  after  another,  cases  which 
illustrate  the  same  kind  of  defect,  yet  in  which  the  defect 
is  not  general,  but  rather  confined  to  a  particular  group 
of  reactions,  by  reason  of  a  circumscribed  lesion. 

In  this  form  of  imitative  suggestion,  it  is  now  clear,  we 
have  a  second  kind  of  subcortical  reaction.  It  is  'secon- 
darily subcortical,'  in  contrast  with  the  organic  or  'pri- 
marily subcortical '  imitations.  When  looked  at  from  the 
point  of  view  of  race  history,  it  gives  us  further  reason 
for  finding  imitation  a  true  instinct,  a  race  habit. ^ 

imitative  condition  of  consciousness,  Ant.  Psych.,  p.  55  :  "  The  different  phe- 
nomena which  we  have  described  are  these;  i.e.,  the  continuation  of  an  atti- 
tude or  a  movement,  the  repetition  of  movements  which  have  been  seen  and 
of  sounds  which  have  been  heard,  the  harmonious  association  of  the  members 
and  of  their  movements."     Cf.  Janet  on  hysteria,  below,  Chap.  XIII.,  §  4,  IV. 

1  Cf.  Falret,  Etudes  cliniques  stir  les  maladies  me7ttales  et  nerveuses,  p.  547. 

2  This  would  involve,  as  I  have  intimated  on  an  earlier  page,  a  doctrine 
which  holds  that  in  the  hypnotic  state,  there  is  inhibition  of  the  cortical  asso- 
ciative or  synthetic  function,  but  not  of  the  simple  cortical  sense  function. 
Cf.  Gurney's  remarks  on  Heidenhain's  explanation  of  *  hypnotic  mimicry,'  in 
Mind,  1884,  p.  493. 

2  In  my  earher  publication  of  some  of  the  positions  of  this  chapter  {Mind, 
January,  1894,  p.  52),  I  argued  against  Bain's  view,  in  his  Senses  and  Intellect, 
pp.  413  ff.  (3d  ed.),  of  imitation  as  in  all  cases  acquired.  In  his  fourth 
edition,  while    repeating    his  former  arguments,  he  nevertheless  so  weakens 


How  to  Observe  CJiildrciis  Imitations.     357 

§  3.    How  to  Observe  Cldldreii  s  Iiniteitioiis} 

There  are  one  or  two  considerations  of  such  practical 
importance  to  all  those  who  wish  to  observe  cases  of  imi- 
tation by  children,  that  I  venture  to  throw  them  together, 
only  saying  by  way  of  introduction  that  they  all  follow 
from  the  general  statement  that  nothing  less  than  the 
child's  personality  is  at  stake  in  the  method  and  matter 
of  its  imitations  ;  for  the  '  self  '  is  but  the  form  or  process 
in  which  the  personal  influences  surrounding  the  child 
take  on  their  new  individuality. 

I.  No  observations  are  of  much  importance  which  are 
not  accompanied  by  a  detailed  statement  of  the  personal 
influences  which  have  affected  the  child.  This  is  the 
more  important  since  the  child  sees  few  persons,  and  sees 
them  constantly.  It  is  not  only  likely — it  is  inevitable 
—  that  he  viake  up  J  lis  personality,  under  limitations  of 
heredity,  by  imitation,  out  of  the  '  copy '  set  in  the  actions, 
temper,  emotions,  of  the  persons  who  build  around  him 
the  social  enclosure  of  his  childhood.  It  is  only  necessary 
to  watch  a  two-year-old  closely  to  see  what  members  of  the 
family  are  giving  him  his  personal  *  copy '  —  to  find  out 
whether  he  sees  his  mother  constantly  and  his  father  sel- 
dom ;    whether   he  plays   much   with  other   children,    and 

them  by  a  supplementary  note  that  I  lind  his  concessions  practically 
bringing  him  into  accord  with  my  own  views.  The  note  is  as  follows  i^loc. 
cit.,  p.  441):  "As  in  other  connections,  I  have  to  qualify  the  foregoing 
explanation  by  admitting  the  possibility  and  the  fact  of  hereditary  transmis- 
sion in  at  least  preparing  the  way  or  giving  facilities  for  the  operation  now 
described.  .  .  .  The  inheritance  of  tendencies  favouring  acquisition  may 
decisively  contribute  to  the  advancement  of  our  early  powers  of  imitation. 
The  term  '  instinct '  would  thus  have  a  certain  fitness.  .  .  ." 

1  See  the  Century  Magazine  for  December,  1894,  and  cf.  Royce's  article 
on  '  The  Imitative  Functions'  in  the  same  magazine  for  May,  1894. 


358  Conscious  Imitation. 

what  their  dispositions  are,  to  a  degree  ;  whether  he  is 
growing  to  be  a  person  of  subjection,  equality,  or  tyranny  ; 
whether  he  is  assimilating  the  elements  of  some  low  unor- 
ganized social  content  from  his  foreign  nurse.  For,  in 
Leibnitz's  phrase,  the  boy  or  girl  is  a  social  monad,  a  little 
world,  which  reflects  the  whole  system  of  influences  com- 
ing to  stir  its  sensibility.  And  just  in  as  far  as  his 
sensibilities  are  stirred,  he  imitates,  and  forms  habits  of 
imitating  ;  and  habits  ?  —  they  are  character  ! 

2.  A  point  akin  to  the  first  is  this  :  every  observation 
should  describe  with  great  accuracy  the  child's  relation  to 
other  children.  Has  he  brothers  or  sisters  ;  how  many  of 
each,  and  of  what  age }  Does  he  sleep  in  the  same  bed  or 
room  with  them?  Do  they  play  much  with  one  another 
alone  .'*  The  reason  is  very  evident.  An  only  child  has 
only  adult '  copy.'  He  can  not  interpret  his  father's  actions, 
or  his  mother's,  oftentimes.  He  imitates  very  blindly.  He 
lacks  the  more  childish  example  of  a  brother  or  sister  near 
himself  in  age.  And  this  difference  is  of  very  great 
importance  to  his  development.  He  lacks  the  stimulus, 
for  example,  of  games,  in  which  personification  is  a  direct 
tutor  to  self-hood,  as  I  shall  remark  further  on.  And 
while  he  becomes  precocious  in  some  lines  of  instruc- 
tion, he  fails  in  imagination,  in  brilliancy  of  fancy.  The 
dramatic,  in  his  sense  of  social  situations,  is  largely  hidden. 
It  is  a  very  great  mistake  to  isolate  children,  especially  to 
isolate  one  or  two  children.  One  alone  is  perhaps  the 
worse,  but  two  alone  are  subject  to  the  other  element  of 
social  danger  which  I  may  mention  next. 

3.  Observers  should  report  with  especial  care  all  cases 
of  unusually  close  relationship  between  children  in  youth, 
such  as  childish  favoritism,   *  platonic  friendships,'  'chum- 


How  to  Observe  Childrciis  Imitations.      359 

ming,'  in  school  or  home,  etc.  We  have  in  these  facts  — 
and  there  is  a  very  great  variety  of  them — an  exaggera- 
tion of  the  social  or  imitative  tendency,  a  narrowing  down 
of  the  personal  suggestive  sensibility  to  a  peculiar  line  of 
well-formed  influences.  It  has  never  been  studied  by  writers 
either  on  the  genesis  of  social  emotion  or  on  the  practice  of 
education.  To  be  sure,  teachers  are  alive  to  the  pros  and 
cons  of  allowing  children  and  students  to  room  together ; 
but  it  is  with  a  view  to  the  possibility  of  direct  immoral 
or  unwholesome  contagion.  This  danger  is  certainly  real ; 
but  we,  as  psychological  observers,  and  above  all  as  teachers 
and  leaders,  of  our  children,  must  go  even  deeper  than 
that.  Consider,  for  example,  the  possible  influence  of  a 
school  chum  and  room-mate  upon  a  girl  in  her  teens ;  for 
this  is  only  an  evident  case  of  what  all  isolated  children 
are  subject  to.  A  sensitive  nature,  a  girl  whose  very  life 
is  a  branch  of  a  social  tree,  is  placed  in  a  new  environ- 
ment, to  engraft  upon  the  members  of  her  mutilated  self 
—  her  very  personality;  it  is  nothing  less  than  that  — 
utterly  new  channels  of  supply.  The  only  safety  possible, 
the  only  way  to  conserve  the  lessons  of  her  past,  apart 
from  the  veriest  chance,  and  to  add  to  the  structure  of 
her  present  character,  lies  in  securing  for  her  the  greatest 
possible  variety  of  social  influences.  Instead  of  this,  she 
meets,  eats,  walks,  talks,  lies  down  at  night,  and  rises  in 
the  morning,  with  one  other  person,  a  'copy'  set  before  her, 
as  immature  in  all  likelihood  as  herself,  or,  if  not  so,  yet  a 
single  personality,  put  there  to  wrap  around  her  growing 
self  the  confining  cords  of  unassimilated  and  foreign  habit. 
Above  all  things,  fathers,  mothers,  teachers,  elders,  give 
the  children  room  !  They  need  all  that  they  can  get,  and 
their  personalities  will  grow  to  fill  it.     Give  them  plenty 


J 


60  Consciotis  Imitation. 


of  companions,  fill  their  lives  with  variety,  — variety  is  the 
soul  of  originality,  and  its  only  source  of  supply.  The 
ethical  life  itself,  the  boy's,  the  girl's,  conscience,  is  born 
in  the  stress  of  the  conflicts  of  suggestion,  born  right  out  of 
his  imitative  hesitations;  and  just  this  is  the  analogy  which 
he  must  assimilate  and  depend  upon  in  his  own  conflicts 
for  self-control  and  social  continence.  So  impressively 
true  is  this  from  the  human  point  of  view,  that  in  my 
opinion  —  formed,  it  is  true,  from  the  very  few  data  acces- 
sible on  such  points,  still  a  positive  opinion  —  children 
should  never  be  allowed,  after  infancy,  to  room  regularly 
together ;  special  friendships  of  a  close  exclusive  kind 
should  be  discouraged  or  broken  up,  except  when  under 
the  immediate  eye  of  the  wise  parent  or  guardian  ;  and 
even  when  allowed,  these  relationships  should,  in  all  cases, 
be  used  to  entrain  the  sympathetic  and  moral  sentiments 
into  a  wider  field  of  social  exercise. 

4.  The  remainder  of  this  section  must  be  devoted  to 
the  further  emphasis  of  the  need  of  close  observation  of 
children's  games,  especially  those  which  may  be  best 
described  as  'society  games.'  All  those  who  have  given 
even  casual  observation  to  the  doings  of  the  nursery  have 
been  impressed  with  the  extraordinary  fertility  of  the  child 
mind,  from  the  second  year  onward,  in  imagining  and  plot- 
ting: social  and  dramatic  situations.  It  has  not  been  as 
evident,  however,  to  these  casual  observers,  nor  to  many 
really  more  skilled,  that  they  were  observing  in  these 
fancy-plays  the  putting  together  anew  of  fragments,  or 
larger  pieces,  of  their  own  mental  history.  But  here,  in 
these  games,  we  see  the  actual  use  which  our  children 
make  of  the  personal  '  copy '  material  which  they  have  got 
from  you  and  me.     If  a  man  study  these  games  patiently 


How  io   Observe  Childreiis  Imitations.      361 

in  his  own  children,  and  analyze  them  out,  he  gradually 
sees  emerge  from  the  child's  inner  consciousness  its  pict- 
ure of  the  boy's  own  father,  whom  he  aspires  to  be  like, 
and  whose  actions  he  seeks  to  generalize  and  apply  anew. 
The  picture  is  poor,  for  the  child  takes  only  what  he  is 
sensible  to.  And  it  does  seem  often,  as  Sighele  patheti- 
cally notices  on  a  large  social  scale,  and  as  the  Westminster 
divines  have  urged  without  due  sense  of  the  pathetic  and 
home-coming  point  of  it,  that  he  takes  more  of  the  bad  in 
us  for  reproduction  than  of  the  good.  But  be  this  as  it 
may,  what  we  give  him  is  all  he  gets.  Heredity  does  not 
stop  with  birth  ;  it  is  then  only  beginning.  And  the  pity 
of  it  is  that  this  element  of  heredity,  this  reproduction  of 
the  fathers  in  the  children,  which  might  be  used  to  redeem 
the  new-forming  personality  from  the  heritage  of  past  com- 
monness or  impurity,  is  simply  left  to  take  its  course  for 
the  further  establishing  and  confirmation  of  it.  Was  there 
ever  a  group  of  school  children  who  did  not  leave  the  real 
school  to  make  a  play  school,  erecting  a  throne  for  one  of 
their  number  to  sit  on  and  'take  off'  the  teacher.^  Was 
there  ever  a  child  who  did  not  play  'church,'  and  force  her 
father  if  possible  into  the  pulpit }  Were  there  ever  chil- 
dren who  did  not  '  buy '  things  from  fancied  stalls  in  every 
corner  of  the  nursery,  when  they  had  once  seen  an  elder 
drive  a  trade  in  the  market }  The  point  is  this :  the  child's 
personality  grows ;  growth  is  always  by  action  ;  he  clothes 
upon  himself  the  scenes  of  his  life  and  acts  them  out ;  so 
he  grows  in  what  he  is,  what  he  understands,  and  what  he 
is  able  to  perform. 

In  order  to  be  of  direct  service  to  observers  of  games 
of  this  character,  I  shall  now  give  a  short  account  of  an 
observation  of  the  kind  made  a  few  weeks  ago  —  one  of 


362  Conscious  luiitation, 

the  simplest  of  many  actual  situations  which  my  two  little 
girls,  Helen  and  EUzabcth,  have  acted  out  together.  It  is 
a  very  commonplace  case,  a  game,  the  elements  of  which 
are  evident  in  their  origin ;  but  I  choose  this  rather 
than  one  more  complex,  since  observers  are  usually  not 
psychologists,  and  they  find  the  elementary  the  more 
instructive. 

On  May  2,  I  was  sitting  on  the  porch  alone  with  the 
children  —  the  two  mentioned  above,  aged  respectively 
four  and  a  half  and  two  and  a  half  years.  Helen,  the 
elder,  told  Elizabeth  that  she  was  her  little  baby ;  that 
is,  Helen  became  'mama,'  and  Elizabeth  *baby.'  The 
younger  responded  by  calling  her  sister  'mama,'  and  the 
play  began. 

"  You  have  been  asleep,  baby.  Now  it  is  time  to  get 
up,"  said  mama.  Baby  rose  from  the  floor,  —  first  falling 
down  in  order  to  rise, —  was  seized  upon  by  'mama,' 
taken  to  the  railing  to  an  imaginary  wash-stand,  and  her 
face  washed  by  rubbing.  Her  articles  of  clothing  were 
then  named  in  imagination,  and  put  on,  one  by  one,  in 
the  most  detailed  and  interesting  fashion.  During  all  this 
'  mama '  kept  up  a  stream  of  baby  talk  to  her  infant : 
"  Now  your  stockings,  my  darling  ;  now  your  skirt,  sweet- 
ness —  or,  no  —  not  yet  —  your  shoes  first,"  etc.,  etc. 
Baby  acceded  to  all  the  details  with  more  than  the  docility 
which  real  infants  usually  show.  When  this  was  done, 
"  Now  we  must  go  tell  papa  good-morning,  dearie,"  said 
mama.  "Yes,  mama,"  came  the  reply;  and  hand  in  hand 
they  started  to  find  papa.  I,  the  spectator,  carefully  read 
my  newspaper,  thinking,  however,  that  the  reality  of  papa, 
seeing  that  he  was  so  much  in  evidence,  would  break  in 
upon  the  imagined  situation.      But  not  so.      Mama  led  her 


How  to  Observe  Childrejis  luiitallons.       363 

baby  directly  past  me  to  the  end  of  the  piazza,  to  a  col- 
umn in  the  corner.  ''There's  papa,"  said  mama;  "now 
tell  him  good-morning."  —  "Good-morning,  papa;  I  am 
very  well,"  said  baby,  bowing  low  to  the  column.  "That's 
good,"  said  mama,  in  ^  gntff,  loiv  voice,  which  caused  in  the 
real  papa  a  thrill  of  amused  self-consciousness  most  difficult 
to  contain.  "  Now  you  must  have  your  breakfast,"  said 
mama.  The  seat  of  a  chair  was  made  a  breakfast-table, 
the  baby's  feigned  bib  put  on,  and  her  porridge  carefully 
administered,  with  all  the  manner  of  the  nurse  who  usu- 
ally directs  their  breakfast.  "Now"  (after  the  meal,  which 
suddenly  became  dinner  instead  of  breakfast),  "you  must 
take  your  nap,"  said  mama.  "  No,  mama ;  I  don't  want 
to,"  said  baby.  "But  you  must."  —  "No;  you  be  baby, 
and  take  the  nap."  —  "But  all  the  other  children  have 
gone  to  sleep,  dearest,  and  the  doctor  says  you  must,''  said 
mama.  This  convinced  baby,  and  she  lay  down  on  the 
floor.  "But  I  haven't  undressed  you."  So  then  came  all 
the  detail  of  undressing  ;  and  mama  carefully  covered  her 
up  on  the  floor  with  a  light  shawl,  saying,  "  Spring  is  com- 
ing now  ;  that'll  be  enough.  Now  shut  your  eyes,  and  go 
to  sleep."  —  "But  you  haven't  kissed  me,  mama,"  said  the 
little  one.  "Oh,  of  course,  my  darling!"  —  so  a  long 
siege  of  kissing !  Then  baby  closed  her  eyes  very  tight, 
while  mama  went  on  tiptoe  away  to  the  end  of  the  porch. 
"Don't  go  away,  mama,"  said  baby.  "No;  mama  wouldn't 
leave  her  darling,"  came  the  reply. 

So  this  went  on.  The  nap  over,  a  walk  was  proposed, 
hats  put  on,  etc.,  the  mama  exercising  great  care  and 
solicitude  for  her  baby.  One  further  incident  to  show 
this:  when  the  baby's  hat  was  put  on  —  the  real  hat  — 
mama   tied    the    strings    rather    tight.      "  Oli  !    you    hurt, 


364  Conscious  Imitation. 

mama,"  said  baby.  "No;  mama  wouldn't  draw  the  strings 
too  tight.  Let  mama  kiss  it.  There,  is  that  better,  my 
darhng.-*"  —  all  comically  true  to  a  certain  sweet  maternal 
tenderness  which  I  had  no  difficulty  in  tracing. 

Now  in  such  a  case,  what  is  to  be  reported,  of  course,  is 
the  facts.  Yet  knowledge  of  more  than  the  facts  is  neces- 
sary, as  I  have  said  above,  in  order  to  get  the  full  psy- 
chological lesson.  We  need  just  the  information  which 
concerns  the  rest  of  the  family,  and  the  social  influences 
of  the  children's  lives.  I  recognized  at  once  every  phrase 
which  the  children  used  in  this  play,  where  they  got  it, 
what  it  meant  in  its  original  context,  and  how  far  its  mean- 
ing had  been  modified  in  this  process  which  I  have  called 
*  social  heredity.'  But  as  that  story  is  reported  to  strangers 
who  have  no  knowledge  of  the  children's  social  antecedents, 
how  much  beyond  the  mere  facts  of  imitation  and  personi- 
fication do  they  get  from  it }  And  how  much  the  more  is 
this  true  when  we  examine  those  complex  games  of  the 
nursery  which  show  the  brilliant  fancy  for  situation  and 
drama  of  the  wide-awake  four-year-old  } 

Yet  we  psychologists  are  free  to  interpret ;  and  how 
rich  the  lessons  even  from  such  a  simple  scene  as  this  ! 
As  for  Helen,  what  could  be  a  more  direct  lesson — a  lived- 
out  exercise  in  sympathy,  in  altruistic  self-denial,  in  the 
healthy  elevation  of  her  sense  of  self  to  the  dignity  of 
kindly  offices,  in  the  sense  of  responsibility  and  agency, 
in  the  stimulus  to  original  effort  and  the  designing  of 
means  to  ends  —  and  all  of  it  with  the  best  sense  of  the 
objectivity  which  is  quite  lost  in  wretched  self-conscious- 
ness in  us  adults,  when  we  personate  other  characters.? 
What  could  further  all  this  highest  mental  growth  better 
than  the  game  by  which  the  lessons  of  her  mother's  daily 


Hozu  to  Observe  Chilelrens  Iinitatioiis,       365 

life  are  read  into  the  child's  little  self  ?  And  then,  in  the 
case  of  Elizabeth,  certain  things  appear.  She  obeys  with- 
out command  or  sanction,  she  takes  in  from  her  sister  the 
elements  of  personal  suggestion  in  their  simpler  childish 
forms  ;  and  certainly  such  scenes,  repeated  every  day  with 
such  variation  of  detail,  must  give  something  of  the  sense 
of  variety  and  social  equality  which  real  life  afterwards 
confirms  and  proceeds  upon  ;  and  lessons  of  the  opposite 
character  are  learned  by  the  same  process. 

And  all  this  exercise  of  fancy  must  strengthen  the 
imaginative  faculty.  The  prolonged  situations,  maintained 
sometimes  whole  days,  or  possibly  weeks,  give  strength  to 
the  imagination  and  train  the  attention.  And  I  think, 
also,  that  the  sense  of  essential  reality,  and  its  distinction 
from  the  unreal,  the  merely  imagined,  is  helped  by  this 
sort  of  symbolic  representation.  But  it  has  its  dangers 
also — very  serious  ones.  And  possibly  the  best  service 
of  observation  just  now  is  to  gather  the  facts  with  a  view 
to  the  proper  recognition  and  avoidance  of  the  dangers. 

Finally,  I  may  be  allowed  a  word  to  interested  par- 
ents. You  can  be  of  no  use  whatever  to  psychologists 
—  to  say  nothing  of  the  actual  damage  you  may  be  to 
the  children  —  unless  you  know  your  babies  through  and 
tJirougJi.  Especially  the  fathers !  They  are  willing  to 
study  everything  else.  They  know  every  corner  of  the 
house  familiarly,  and  what  is  done  in  it  except  the  nnrsery. 
A  man  labours  for  his  children  ten  hours  a  day,  gets  his 
life  insured  for  their  support  after  his  death,  and  yet  he 
lets  their  mental  growth,  the  formation  of  their  characters, 
the  evolution  of  their  personality,  go  on  by  absorption  —  if 
no  worse  —  from  common,  vulgar,  imported  and  changing, 
often  immoral,  attendants!     Plato  said  the  state  should  train 


366  Conscious  Imitation. 

the  children ;  and  added  that  the  wisest  man  should  rule 
the  state.  This  is  to  say  that  the  wisest  man  should  tend 
his  children  !  Hugo  gives  us,  in  Jean  Valjean  and  Cosette, 
a  picture  of  the  true  paternal  relationship.  We  hear  a 
certain  group  of  studies  called  the  lumiajiities,  and  it  is 
right.  But  the  best  school  in  the  humanities  for  every 
man  is  in  his  own  house.^ 

1  I  venture  to  insert  this  more  popular  section  for  homiletic  purposes.     It 
may  serve  for  some  readers  to  relieve  the  monotony  of  the  theoretical  chapters. 


CHAPTER    XIII. 

The  Origin  of  Volition. 

§   I.    Description  and  Analysis  of  Volition. 

In  earlier  chapters  I  have  endeavoured  to  trace  the 
development  of  some  aspects  of  the  child's  active  life  up 
to  the  rise  of  volition.  The  transition  from  the  involun- 
tary class  of  muscular  reactions  to  which  the  general  word 
*  suggestion '  applies,  to  the  performance  of  actions  fore- 
seen and  intended  occurs,  as  I  have  before  intimated, 
through  the  persistence  and  repetition  of  imitative  sug- 
gestions. The  distinction  between  simple  imitation  and 
persistent  imitation  has  been  made  and  illustrated  in  an 
earlier  place. ^  Now,  in  saying  that  volition  —  the  clearly 
conscious  phenomenon  of  will  —  arises  historically  on  the 
basis  of  persistent  imitation,  what  I  mean  is  this  :  that 
the  no7n)ial  child's  fij'st  exhibition  of  volition  is  found  in 
its  repeated  efforts  to  imitate  something ;  and  what  it  imi- 
tates, its  'copy,'  is  of  two  great  kinds :  (/)  something  external, 
such  as  move7nents  seen  and  noises  heard ;  and  {2)  some- 
thing internal,  arising  in  its  oivn  memory,  imagination,  or 
thought.  I  shall  consider,  first,  the  rise  of  volition  by 
imitation  of  external  copies,  —  since  this  comes  first  in 
natural  history,  or  phylogenesis, — and  then  consider  the 
modifications  which  are  necessary  when  we  come  to  con- 

^  Above,  Chap.  VI.,  §  4. 
367 


368  The  Origin  of  Volition. 

sider  memory  and  imagination  as  setting  copies  for  imita- 
tion to  the  individual  child. 

An  adequate  analysis  of  will,  with  reference  to  the  fiat 
of  volition,  reveals  three  great  factors  for  which  a  theory  of 
the  origin  of  this  function  should  provide.  These  three 
elements  of  the  voluntary  process  are  desire,  deliberation, 
and  effort.  Desire  is  distinguished  from  impulse  by  its 
intellectual  quality,  i.e.,  by  the  fact  that  it  always  has 
reference  to  a  presentation  or  pictured  object.  This  dis- 
tinguishes desire  from  that  formidable  and  refractory 
thing  which  is  called  'restlessness.'  Organic  impulses  may 
pass  into  desires,  when  their  objects  become  conscious. 
Further,  desire  implies  lack  of  satisfaction  of  the  impulse 
on  which  it  rests  —  a  degree  of  inhibition,  thwarting,  un- 
fulfilment.  Put  more  generally,  these  two  characteristics 
of  desire  are  :  (i)  a  pictured  object  suggesting  associated 
experiences  which  it  does  not  suffice  to  realize,  and  (2)  an 
incipient  motor  reaction  which  the  imaged  object  stimu- 
lates but  does  not  discharge.^  Analysis  shows,  I  think, 
that  these  two  points  are  equally  important,  because  correl- 
ative. Without  associated  experiences,  the  object  would 
simply  give  rise  to  simple  ideo-motor  suggestion,  as  in  the 
cases  already  cited,  and  in  hypnotic  suggestion  ;  but  these 
associated  experiences  lack  body,  satisfying  quality,  the 
*  reality  coefficient.'  In  Pauline  phrase,  'What  a  man  hath, 
why  doth  he  yet  hope  for } '  But  the  mere  picturing  of 
objects  with  their  associates,  of  whatever  kind,  does  not 
constitute  desire.  Desire  is  a  tendency-state,  an  incipient 
action,  a  condition  of  high  potential,  which,  however,  does 
not    discharge    itself.      P'or   example,  —  to    take   an    illus- 

1  See  my  Hatidbook  of  Psychology,  II.,  Chap.  XTV.,  §  2  (pp.  324  ff.),  for  the 
general  analysis  of  desire. 


Description  and  Analysis  of  Volition.      369 

tration  from  our  main  subject,  the  infant, — the  child 
continues  to  cry  for  an  apple  which  his  nurse  refuses  to 
give  him  ;  the  nurse's  prohibition  has  not  the  requisite 
inhibitive  force  to  obliterate  the  motor  tensions  aroused 
by  the  pictured  fruit  and  its  associated  pleasures.  But 
the  child's  father  comes  into  the  room,  and  says,  *No!' 
Forthwith  the  child  gives  it  up,  satisfies  himself  with 
other  objects,  and  no  longer  shows  the  motor  tendencies 
and  expressions  which  indicate  desire.  Yet  in  this  latter 
case,  the  object-picture  and  its  suggested  pleasures  are 
still  present  just  the  same.  Real  desire  is  gone,  I  think, 
as  completely  as  in  the  hypnotic  trance,  when  a  new 
command  turns  the  patient's  motor  responses  into  new 
channels.  I  do  not  desire  the  millions  of  my  neighbour, 
nor  a  seat  in  the  House  of  Lords  ;  my  sense  that  such 
things  are  unattainable  inhibits  all  active  attitude.  But, 
for  the  opposite  reason,  I  do  desire  an  increase  in  my 
salary,  and  a  seat  on  the  bench  where  competent  psychol- 
ogists hold  counsel  together. 

These  prerequisites  of  desire  allowed,  it  becomes  rela- 
tively easy  to  fix  the  rise  of  the  phenomenon  in  the  in- 
fant's growth.  Evidently,  memory  must  be  well  developed, 
and  the  clear  defining  of  a  mental  picture,  that  it  may  be  an 
appropriate  nucleus  to  a  particular  desire.  This  defining, 
it  is  further  evident,  must  be  sought,  first,  in  connection 
with  the  senses  whose  so-called  'presentative '  element  is 
earliest  and  most  pronounced.  Sight  and  sound  memories 
fulfil  this  requirement  first ;  they  are  most  clear-cut  and 
uncomplicated  with  other  sense  pictures.  Further,  mus- 
cular memories  are  among  the  earliest  with  which  they 
become  associated,  some  such  connections  being  guaran- 
teed   by    heredity.       And    the    necessary    associations    of 

2  B 


370  The  Origin  of  Volition. 

pleasure,  which  powerfully  impel  to  desire,  are  pungent 
and  strong  in  the  case  of  muscular  sensations. 

I  think  it  is  in  connection  with  sight  and  hearing 
memories  of  pleasant  experiences,  accordingly,  as  they 
are  associated  with  pleasurable  or  not  very  painful  move- 
ments, that  desire  is  to  be  first  looked  for  normally.  Of 
auditory  memories,  the  voice  of  mother  or  nurse,  and 
sounds  associated  with  the  preparation  of  food,  etc.,  be- 
come evident  stimulations  to  lively  anticipatory  reactions 
which  express  desire.  On  the  side  of  vision,  again,  similar 
indications  are  abundant,  and  extend  back  yet  earlier  in 
the  infant's  mental  history. 

The  theory  which  connects  desire  fundamentally  with 
appetite  and  thirst  for  pleasure  can  be  defended,  I  think, 
only  when  supplemented  from  the  side  of  simple  ideo-motor 
suggestion.  It  is  clear  that  appetite  is  at  first  organic, 
purely  affective;  it  has  no  objective  terminus.^  And  it  is 
only  as  appetites  get  tied  to  some  well-defined  visual  or 
auditory  memory  picture,  that  the  unrest  of  hunger  and 
thirst  becomes  the  desire  for  food  and  drink.  But  all 
desires  are  not  thus  founded  in  appetite,  nor  aimed  at 
pleasure.^  It  is  only  going  a  step  farther,  therefore,  in 
the  recognition  of  the  essentials  of  the  state  called  desire 
in  normal  and  typical  cases,  to  say,  as  I  have  said  else- 
where,^ that  "  desire  takes  its  rise  in  visual  (or  auditory) 
suggestion,  and  develops  under  its  lead." 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  seems  to  me  to  be  extremely 
likely  that  the  first  cases  of  real  desire  in  the  infant's  con- 

1  The  cries  and  other  movements  which  are  associated  with  appetite  are 
largely  organic  pain  reflexes. 

2  See  above,  Chap.  VI.,  §  4,  and  Handbook,  II.,  pp.  323  ff. 
^Handbook,  II.,  p.  324. 


Description  and  Analysis  of  Volition.      371 

scioiisness  find  their  expression  in  the  movements  of  its 
hands  toward  or  from  objects  which  it  sees.  We  have 
seen  that  hand-movements  are  the  natural  outlets  for  clear 
differences  in  consciousness.  As  soon  as  there  is  clear 
visual  presentation  of  objects  we  find  impulsive  muscular 
reactions  directed  toward  them,  at  first  in  an  excessively 
crude  fashion,  but  becoming  rapidly  refined.  These  move- 
ments are  free  and  uninhibited  —  simple  sensori-motor 
suggestive  reactions.  But  we  have  seen,  in  the  experi- 
ments described  above,  that  the  vain  grasping  at  distant 
objects,  which  prevailed  up  to  about  the  sixth  month, 
tended  to  disappear  rapidly  in  the  two  subsequent  months 
—  just  about  the  time  of  the  rise  of  imitation.  During 
the  eighth  month,  my  child,  H.,  would  not  grasp  at  highly- 
coloured  objects  more  than  sixteen  inches  distant,  her 
reaching  distance  being  ten  to  twelve  inches.  This  train- 
ing of  impulse  is  evidently  an  association  of  muscular 
sensations  from  the  arm  with  visual  experiences  of  dis- 
tance. The  suggested  reaction  becomes  inhibited  in  a 
growing  degree  by  counteracting  nervous  processes  which 
probably  began  their  influence  much  earlier.  Here  are  the 
conditions  necessary  to  the  rise  of  desire.  It  is  a  typical 
instance,  at  any  rate,  whether  or  not  it  be,^  as  I  think,  the 
first  instance,  of  the  full  fact  of  desire. 

1  Of  course,  like  all  other  dividing  lines  in  consciousness,  such  a  line  of 
division  is  not  well  marked.  It  is  impossible  to  say  just  how  far  the  dumb, 
unpictured,  organic  ends  in  cases  of  appetite,  unrest,  muscular  discomfort,  etc., 
must  crystallize  into  outline  and  objective  reference  to  be  no  longer  impulse, 
but  desire.  The  needs  of  our  terminology  rather  than  the  mental  facts  them- 
selves lead  to  such  divisions.  I  also  must  disclaim  having  said  —  what  I  have 
been  quoted  as  saying,  in  the  passage  of  my  Handbook  referred  to  —  that  a 
blind  and  deaf  child  would  never  have  desire  !  Sight  and  sound  act  first 
only  because  and  when  they  are  first  as  memory  objects  ;  if  they  are  absent, 
then  less  clear  mental  pictures  get  to  be  desired,  of  course. 


372  The  Origin  of  Volition. 

The  further  requisite  to  volition,  as  analysis  gives  it, 
is  'deliberation.'  The  phenomenon  called  'deliberative 
suggestion '  has  already  been  described  and  illustrated 
from  child-life.i  The  line  of  cleavage  between  such  sug- 
gestion and  the  deliberation  of  volition  lies,  I  think,  just 
where  that  between  impulse  and  desire  lies.  The  charac- 
teristic thing  about  desire  is  the  advanced  representative 
process  it  involves  —  the  third-level  process  on  the  brain 
side  —  with  the  complex  sensori-motor  system  which  is 
the  basis  of  various  inhibitions.  So  in  deliberation,  the 
complexity  actually  present  in  deliberative  suggestion 
passes  up  to  a  higher  level.  The  elements  of  it  become 
clearly  pictured,  co-ordinated  in  the  attention,  and  esti- 
mated, as  to  relative  suitableness  for  execution.  It  is  a 
vivid,  clear  thing  in  consciousness,  this  deliberation,  both 
as  to  the  elements  of  representation  and  as  to  the  motor 
tendencies  which  they  represent.  On  the  contrary,  the 
child's  mind,  in  '  deliberative  suggestion,'  is  analogous  to 
the  state  of  conflicting  impulse,  motor  jerkiness,  unreason- 
able caprice,  seen  also  in  certain  pathological  subjects, 
who  are  victims  of  aboidia  in  any  of  its  forms.  The  essen- 
tial difference  —  and  it  is  essential,  I  think,  functionally 
considered  —  is  that  the  deliberation  of  volition  involves 
attention  at  its  normal  gait,  and  the  motor  co-ordina- 
tions which  are  characteristic  of  it  and  of  its  seat  among 
the  highest  brain  relationships.  Now  the  resolution  of 
this  conscious  complexity  of  motives,  as  found  in  delib- 
eration, is  another  and  the  culminating  characteristic  of 
volition. 

Effort,   in    all   its   forms,   from   simple   consent,  accept- 
ance, ratification,  of  an  action  as  good  or  as  real,  to  the 

1  Above,  Chap.  VI.,  §  3. 


Rise  of  Volition  in  the  Child.  2)7 2> 

violent  exertion  of  despair,  or  passion, — effort  arises  just 
after  deliberation,  and  puts  an  end  to  it.  We  need  not 
go  into  the  vexed  question  of  the  meaning  of  effort,  its 
basis,  etc.  ;  all  we  need  here  is  its  natural  history.  And 
everybody  will  admit  that  it  puts  an  end  to  mental  hesita- 
tion and  deliberation,  it  settles  things  as  far  as  one's  atti- 
tude is  concerned,  and  issues  in  action  as  far  as  inhibiting 
conditions  will  permit.  The  sense  of  effort,  then,  seems 
to  accompany,  or  indeed  to  be,  the  passage  of  conscious- 
ness into  a  state  of  motor  monoideism,  or  strong  attention, 
after  the  perplexities  of  deliberation.  It  arises  just  when 
an  end  is  put  to  motor  plurality  by  synthesis  or  co- 
ordination.^ 

§  2.     T/ie   Typical  Case  of  the  Rise  of  Volition  in  the 

Child. 

These  three  characters  of  volition  —  desire,  attentive 
deliberation,  effort  —  find  their  typical  fulfilment,  I  think, 
in  the  *  try-try-again  '  experience  of  infants  ;  and  the  evident 
case  of  this,  seen  in  the  persistent  imitation  of  sounds 
heard  and  movements  seen,  the  '  external  copies  '  spoken  of 
above,  may  be  now  considered. 

We  have  seen  that  sight  and  hearing,  in  direct  association 
with  muscular  sensation,  supply  the  materials  for  reproduc- 
tion largely  at  this  early  period  ;  and  it  has  now  been  urged 
that  we  are  to  look  to  imitation,  considered  as  a  type  of 
reaction,  as  the  principal  method  of  adjustment  of  the 
organism  to  its  surroundings.  Independently,  however,  of 
this  last  presumption  —  indeed,  in  my  own  mental  progress 
it  was  the  facts  of  early  volition  that  led  me  to  the  broader 

1  Cf.  the  full  treatment  of  the  appropriate  chapters  of  my  Handbook  of 
Psychology,  Vol.  II.,  especially  Chap.  XV.,  §  i,  and  Chap.  XVI.,  §  i. 


374  ^/^^'  Origin  of  Volitioji. 

view  of  imitation  in  mental  development  —  the  direct 
evidence  on  the  point  is  quite  convincing. 

Persistent  Imitation  and  Volition.  —  In  persistent  imita- 
tion we  have  an  advance  on  simple  imitation  in  two  ways  : 
(i)  A  comparison  of  the  first  result  produced  by  the  child 
(movement,  sound)  with  the  suggesting  image  or  'copy' 
imitated.  This  is  nascent  deliberation.  For,  when  the 
dynamogenic  influences  of  these  presentations  are  taken 
into  account,  we  find  a  conflict  on  the  motor  side.  The 
old  hand-movement,  let  us  say,  associated  with  the  'copy,' 
as  it  has  been  established  by  simple  imitation,  instinct,  or 
impulse,  does  not  adequately  represent  the  influence  now 
exerted  by  the  *  copy,'  plus  that  of  the  new  optical  picture 
created  by  the  reaction  itself.  The  dynamogenic  condition 
is  now  complex.  This  gives  rise  to  the  state  of  dissatisfac- 
tion, motor  restlessness,  which  is  desire,  best  described  in 
this  connection  by  the  phrase  '  will-stimulus  '  ;  (2)  the  out- 
burst of  this  complex  motor  condition  in  a  new  reaction, 
accompanied  in  consciousness  by  the  attainment  of  a 
monoideistic  state — the  'end  in  view' — and  the  feeling 
of  effort.  Here,  then,  in  persistent  imitation  we  have, 
thus  briefly  put,  the  necessary  elements  of  the  voluntary 
psychosis  for  the  first  time  clearly  present. 

The  reason  that  in  imitation  the  material  for  volition 
is  found  is  seen  to  be  that  here  the  'circular  process,* 
already  described,  maintains  itself  in  a  conscious  way 
through  the  picturing  of  sights,  sounds,  etc.  In  reactions 
which  are  not  consciously  imitative,  for  example  an  ordi- 
nary pain-movement  reaction,  this  circular  process,  whereby 
the  result  of  the  first  movement  becomes  itself  a  stimulus 
to  the  second,  etc.,  is  not  brought  about  ;  or,  if  it  do  arise, 
it  consists  simply  in  a  repetition  of  the  same  motor  event 


Rise  of  Volition  in  the  Child,  375 

fixed  by  association  —  as  the  repetition  of  the  via  sound 
so  common  with  very  young  infants.  Consciousness  re- 
mains monoideistic.  But  in  persistent  imitation,  the  reac- 
tion performed  comes  in  by  eye  or  ear  as  a  new  and 
different  stimulus  ;  here  is  the  state  of  motor  polyideism 
necessary  for  the  supervention  of  the  feeUng  of  effort. 
The  motor  process  must  be  reduced  by  co-ordination  to  a 
reaction  which  will  reproduce  the  copy,  and  at  the  same 
time  employ,  with  least  modification,  the  channels  of  dis- 


/fl 


^\-— 


mc 


mi 
Fig.  XIII.  — Simple  Imitation.  v,v'  =  Visual  Seat;  mp^  Motor  Seat; 
w/=  Muscle  moved;  w^  =  Muscle-sense  Seat;  ^  =  'Copy'  imitated; 
B=  Imitation  made.  The  two  Processes  v  and  v  flow  together 
in  the  Old  Channel  v,  mp,  fixed  by  Association,  and  the  Reac- 
tion is  repeated  without  Change  or  Effort. 

charge  already  fixed  by  the  association  between  presentation 
and  movement. 

From  this  and  the  other  lines  of  evidence  given  below, 
we  are  able  to  see  more  clearly  the  conditions  under  which 
effort  arises.  It  seems  clear  that  (i)  the  muscular  sen- 
sations arising  from  a  suggestive  reaction  do  not  present 
all  the  conditions;  in  young  children,  just  as  in  habitual 
adult  performances,  muscular  sensations  simply  tend  to  give 
a  repetition  of  the  muscular   event  by  strict  association, 


37^  The  Origin  of  Volition. 

without  any  new  attentive  co-ordination  at  all.  There  is 
no  new  adaptation,  and  so  no  effort.  The  kinaesthetic 
centre  empties  into  a  lower  motor  centre  in  some  such 
way  as  that  described  by  James/  along  the  diagonal  line 
vti\  mp  in  the  'motor  square'  diagram  given  above  (Fig. 
XIII.).  This  is  also  true  when  (2)  sensations  of  the  're- 
mote '  kinaesthetic  order,  the  sight  or  hearing  of  movements 
made,  are  added  to  the  muscular  sensations.  They  may 
all  coalesce  to  produce  again  a  repetition  of  the  original 
reaction.  The  '  remote  '  and  *  immediate  '  sources  of  motor 
stimulation  reinforce  each  other.  This  is  seen  in  a  child's 
satisfied  repetition  of  its  own  mistakes  in  speaking  and 
drawing,  although  it  hears  and  sees  its  own  performances. 
Consequently  (3)  there  is  muscular  effort  only  when  the 
'  copy  '  persists  and  is  compared  with  the  result  of  the  first 
reaction  ;  that  is,  on  the  mental  side,  when  the  two  presen- 
tations are  held  together  in  the  attention,  so  that  together 
they  represent  one  intended  movement  or  mental  end  ;  and 
on  the  physical  side,  when  the  two  processes,  started  respec- 
tively by  the  'copy'  and  the  reactive  result,  are  co-ordinated 
together  in  a  common  motor  discharge  {ccy  inp'  in  Fig. 
XIV.).  The  stimulus  to  repeated  effort  arises  from  the 
lack  of  this  co-ordination  or  identity  in  the  motor  influences 
of  the  different  stimulations  which  reach  a  possible  centre 
of  co-ordination  simultaneously  ;  or  if  we  consider  such 
co-ordination  only  functionally  —  instead  of  making  it  a 
matter  of  a  separate  local  seat  —  this  will-stimulus  repre- 
sents the  degree  of  difficulty  these  stimulations  have  in 
getting  thus  united  in  a  common  motor  function. ^     The 

1  Princ.  of  Psychology,  II.,  p.  582. 

2  This  does  not  necessarily  imply  a  central  vs.  peripheral  theory  of  the  setise 
of  effort;  for  the  'relative  difficulty'  spoken  of  in  effecting  the  co-ordination 
in   the   attention  may  itself  represent  peripheral  elements  which  inhibit  the 


Rise  of  Volition  in  the  Child. 


Zll 


mental  outcome,  effort,  accompanies  the  gathering  of  these 
combined  influences,  and,  as  soon  as  this  outburst  repro- 
duces the  'copy,'  the  effort  is  said  to  'succeed,'  the  subject 
is  satisfied,  *  will-stimulus '  disappears,  and  the  reaction  tends 
to  become  simple  as  habit. 


Fig.  XIV.  — Persistent  Imitation  with  Effort.  C=  Successful  Imita- 
tion; <;^  =  Co-ordinating  Centre,  either  Local  or  Purely  Func- 
tional. Other  Letters  same  as  in  Fig.  XI 1 1.,  with  the  added 
Circuit  cc,  mp' ,  mt' ,  mc .  The  Processes  at  v  and  v'  do  not  flow 
together  in  the  Old  Channel  v,  mp,  but  are  co-ordinated  at  cc 
IN  A  New  Reaction  mp' ,  jni',  which  includes  all  the  Elements  of 
THE  'Copy'   {A)   and   more.     The  Useless  Elements   then    fall 

AWAY    because    THEY    ARE    USELESS    AND    THE    SUCCESSFUL    EFFORT    IS 

established. 


Physiologically  the  point  which  distinguishes  persistent 
imitation  with  effort  from  simple  imitation  with  repetition 
is  this  co-ordination  of  processes  in  the  centre.  In  simple 
imitation  the  excitement  aroused  by  the  reaction,  as  its 
result  is  reported  inwards  by  the  eye  or  ear,  finds  no 
outlet  except  that  already  utilized  in  the  earlier  sugges- 

attention,  or  lack  of  the  necessary  peripheral  elements  to  stimulate  the  atten- 
tion, or  the  very  feeling  of  effort  may  be  really  sensations  from  the  muscles 
which  are  used  in  the  act  of  attention.     See  Chap.  XV.,  §§  I  ff. 


37^  The  Origin  of  Volition, 

tive  reactions.  Hence  it  passes  off  in  the  way  of  a  repe- 
tition of  the  earlier  discharge,  which  represents  inherited 
tendency,  reflex  movement,  accidental  association,  pleasure- 
pain  acquisition,  or  what  not.  All  this  is  an  affair  of  the 
'second  level,'  of  suggestion,  of  reactive  consciousness. 
The  child  repeats  its  prattle  over  and  over,  as  it  lies  abed 
in  the  early  morning,  simply  from  vigour,  not  from  desire, 
nor  from  effort,  least  of  all  with  deliberation.  The  sounds 
he  makes  are  accompanied  by  sensations  in  his  vocal 
organs,  and  what  he  hears  he  makes  again,  and  so  on, 
simply  because  his  machinery  works  that  way  —  works 
easily  and  gives  him  the  pleasure  of  exercise  and  rhythm. 
But  persistent  imitation  —  how  different!  The  same 
reaction  is  not  repeated.  He  is  no  longer  delighted 
with  his  circular  activity.  He  detects  differences  between 
what  he  sees  or  hears  and  what  he  produces  by  hand  or 
tongue,^  and  finds  these  differences  unpleasant  to  him. 
Then  he  makes  effort  to  reduce  the  difference  by  alter- 
ing his  movements,  and  what  is  most  remarkable,  he 
succeeds  in  doing  so.  How  he  does  this  —  how  he  brings 
about  a  change  in  his  reactions,  from  senseless  repetition 
to  intelligent  conformity  to  the  copy  which  he  imitates  — 
that  is  the  question  of  adaptation  ;2  but  he  does  it,  and  the 
least  that  this  can  mean  is  that  there  is  in  some  way  a 

^  "  It  seems  just  to  say,"  remarks  Janet  {AtitofJi.  Psych.,  p.  475),  "that 
voluntary  effort  consists  in  the  systematization  of  images  and  memories 
which  are  accustomed  to  express  themselves  one  at  a  time  automatically"; 
and  (p.  474),  "the  patient  copies  the  movement  of  my  arm  automatically, 
while  I  copy  a  drawing  voluntarily  ;  the  reason  of  it  is  that  the  patient  acts 
only  because  he  has  an  image  of  the  action,  and  he  carries  it  out  without  pass- 
ing judgment  upon  it  [simple  imitative  suggestion],  while  I  copy  the  drawing, 
perceiving  the  resemblance,  and  because  I  perceive  it  "  [persistent  imitation, 
or  volition].     Compare  his  context. 

-  See  above,  Chap.  VII.,  §§  i,  2. 


Rise  of  Volition  in  tJic  Child,  379 

modification  of  the  impelling  influence  of  his  old  associa- 
tions. 

What  happens  is  an  'effort,'  and  by  this  effort  the  two 
stimulations,  the  original  'copy'  and  his  own  reproduction 
of  it,  are  combined  in  one  motor  response.  The  two 
centres,  or  partial  centres,  stimulated  by  the  original 
copy,  on  one  hand,  and  by  the  reaction  as  it  is  seen  or 
heard,  on  the  other  hand,  get  combined  in  a  common 
action,  whose  outcome  is  not  carried  off  entirely  by  the  old 
associated  channel  of  discharge,  but  finds  in  part  new  ad- 
jacent channel ;  and  so  the  external  reaction  becomes 
different  and  more  adequate,  only  to  be  reported  in  again 
by  eye  or  ear,  and  so  by  co-ordination  to  produce  again  a 
new  effort,  etc. 

The  foregoing  development  uses  the  term  '  co-ordina- 
tion '  with  a  twofold  application  :  first,  it  is  applied  to  the 
physical  process  in  the  brain,  whereby,  as  we  may  suppose, 
different  areas  of  stimulation  are  brought  together  for 
a  united  function  in  a  very  complex  way.  It  involves 
at  once  greater  complexity  and  larger  unity.  It  is  the 
type  of  function  characteristic  of  the  highest  level,  the 
cortex.  The  lower  reactions,  the  reflexes,  suggestive 
responses,  etc.,  are  each,  when  taken  alone,  independent 
in  great  measure  ;  each  acts  for  itself  on  its  own  stimulus. 
But  cortical  processes  are  not  so.  While  they  are  more 
varied,  they  are  also  more  unstable  and  more  intercon- 
nected. They  coalesce  in  a  single  function  which  does 
not  show  its  enormous  complexity  on  its  face.  For  exam- 
ple, speech  involves  five  or  six  well-localized  areas  co-ordi- 
nated in  a  common  discharge,  and  it  is  rare  that  one  is 
injured  without  injuring  the  common  function  which  draws 
support  from  each. 


380  The  Origin  of  Volition. 

On  the  mental  side  we  find  co-ordination  also,  and  it  is 
always  a  process  which  takes  attention  in  the  learning 
and,  until  it  becomes  fixed  by  habit,  in  the  execution  also, 
invariably.  Every  original  co-ordination  of  stimulations 
involving  desire,  deliberation,  effort,  is  an  act  of  attention. 
This,  of  course,  cannot  be  a  mere  incidental  or  unessential 
fact.  All  that  we  know  of  attention  shows  it  to  be  too 
central  a  thing  for  that.  It  remains,  therefore,  among 
the  problems  yet  to  be  answered,  what  attention  is,  how 
its  rise  takes  place,  and  what  its  presence  means  in  the 
beginning  of  voluntary  movement.^  Here  I  may  only  add 
that  the  function  of  consciousness,  in  this  act  of  persistent 
imitation,  seems  to  be  exhausted  in  the  fact  of  close  atten- 
tion to  the  *  copy.'  The  infant  does  not  attend  to  his 
movements,^  nor  does  he  shift  his  attention  from  his  copy 
to  his  own  imitation,  except  between  his  efforts.  On  the 
contrary,  in  visual  imitation,  for  example,  he  keeps  his  eye 
fixed  on  the  movement,  the  tracing,  or  the  action  of  the 
person  whom  he  is  imitating ;  and  his  success  in  the  effort 
seems  to  depend  upon  the  degree  in  which  he  is  able  to 
hold  this  copy  series  up  steady  and  unchanged  before  him. 
How  it  comes  that  during  this  concentration  upon  the 
copy,  and  by  reason  of  it,  the  muscular  actions  are  con- 
forming themselves  more  and  more  to  its  exact  reproduc- 
tion—  this  has  been  the  topic  of  the  earlier  chapter  on 
Adaptation. 

The  complex  'copy'  of  persistent  imitation  is  necessary, 
therefore,  as  a  stimulus  to  the  tentative  voluntary  use  of 
the  muscles.  The  theory  that  all  voluntary  movements  are 
led  up  to  by  spontaneous  reactions  which  result  in  pleas- 

1  See  below,  Chap.  XV. 

^  So  we  have  seen  in  connection  with  '  tracery-imitation,'  above,  p.  87. 


Rise  of  Volition  in  the  Child.  381 

ure  or  pain,  and  then  get  repeated  only  because  of  their 
hedonic  result,  will  not  hold  water  for  an  instant  in  the 
presence  of  the  phenomena  of  imitation.  Suppose  H. 
endeavouring  in  the  crudest  fashion  to  put  a  rubber  on  the 
end  of  a  pencil,  after  seeing  me  do  it, — one  of  her  earliest 
imitations.  What  a  chaos  of  ineffective  movements  !  But 
after  repeated  efforts  she  gets  nearer  and  nearer  it,  till  at 
last,  with  daily  object-lessons  from  me,  she  accomplishes 
it.  Here  one  of  the  most  valuable  combinations  of  thumb 
and  finger  movements  is  acquired,  simply  by  imitation,  and 
in  the  face  of  constant  discouragement,  anything  but  pleas- 
ant to  the  child.  If  it  is  due  to  the  fact  simply  that 
movement  gives  pleasure,  why  does  she  not  turn  to  other 
movements }  Why  persist  in  this  one  failure-bringing 
thing  ?  Suppose  there  had  been  no  impulse  to  do  what 
she  saw  me  do,  no  motor  force  in  the  simple  idea  of  the 
rubber  on  the  pencil,  no  instinct  to  imitate ;  what  happy 
combination  of  Bain's  spontaneous  and  accidental  move- 
ments would  have  produced  this  result,  and  how  long 
would  it  have  taken  the  child  if  she  had  waited  for  experi- 
ences actually  pleasurable  to  build  up  this  motor  combi- 
nation } 

In  cases  of  persistent  imitation  there  is  more  than  asso- 
ciation as  such.  The  movements  imitated  are  new,  as 
combinations.  It  is  probable,  it  is  true,  that  various  ideas 
of  former  movements  are  brought  up,  and  that  the  child 
has  the  consciousness  of  general  motor  capacity,  resting, 
in  the  first  place,  upon  spontaneous  impulsive  reactions, 
and  it  is  probable  that  this  consciousness  is  a  kind  of 
massed  or  bunched  sense  of  the  particular  member  whose 
action  is  necessary,  arising  from  former  movements  of  it  ; 
but  on  this  insufficient  associational  basis  he  strikes  out 


382  The  Origin  of  Volition, 

into  the  deepest  water  of  untried  experience.  For  this 
reason,  as  was  said  above,  I  believe  that  in  persistent 
imitation  we  have  the  skeleton-process  of  volition  ;  mean- 
ing that  at  this  stage  consciousness  is  not  held  down  in  its 
motor  outcome  strictly  to  past  reactions  held  in  memory, 
but  issues  as  a  new  and  more  adaptive  co-ordination  of 
them.  Physiologically,  we  would  expect  that  the  brain 
energy  released  by  such  a  new  stimulus  as  the  pencil- 
rubber  combination  would  pass  off  by  the  motor  channels 
already  fixed  by  spontaneous,  reflex,  and  associated  reac- 
tions, e.g.,  that  the  child  would  be  content  with  a  motor 
reaction  of  the  suggestive  kind.  But  not  so.  He  is  not 
content  until  he  produces  a  new  reaction  of  this  particular 
sort ;  and  we  must  suppose  that,  in  consequence  of  each 
effort  of  the  child,  the  physical  process  is  heightened  and 
its  issuing  movement  selected  from,  until  the  one  copy 
imitated  is  produced  by  him. 

It  will  be  strange,  in  my  opinion,  if  this  view  of  the 
origin  of  volition  do  not  seem  quite  the  most  natural  one. 
What  are  we  really  bringing  about  in  willing  anything  t 
Are  we  not  hoping  that  through  us  a  kind  of  experience, 
object,  thing  in  the  world,  may  be  brought  about  after  the 
pattern  of  our  idea  or  purpose.?  Are  we  not  trying  to 
reinstate  something  which  we  think  ought  to  be  reinstated 
for  us  or  for  others.?  But  is  not  this  just  the  essential 
thing  in  imitation, — the  reinstatement  of  something,  the 
copying  of  what  has  already  been  in  us,  in  others,  or  in 
the  world.?  A  child  imitates  automatically  a  sound  he 
hears  —  one  case  ;  and  then,  remembering  it  but  not  hear- 
ing it,  wills  to  make  it  —  a  second  case.  Where  is  the 
difference  in  the  type  of  occurrence  in  the  two  cases,  as 
far  as  the  child's  active  life  is  concerned  .?     The  only  dif- 


Rise  of  Volition  in  the  Child.  ^^^^ 

ference  is  that,  in  the  former  case,  his  ear  brings  to  him 
what  he  imitates,  and  his  motor  apparatus  is  ready  for  it ; 
in  the  latter  case,  his  memory  brings  it  to  him,  and  his 
motor  apparatus  is  not  altogether  ready  for  it.  Is  it  not 
likely,  therefore,  that  the  simplest  case  of  the  more  com- 
plex instance  of  this  one  typical  process  springs  out  of  the 
most  complex  case  of  the  simpler  instance,  —  that  the 
growing  complexity  of  the  conditions  is  just  what  is  meant 
by  the  child's  desire,  and  that  the  growing  richness  and 
explicitness  and  difficulty  of  the  conscious  performance, 
what  is  meant  by  his  volition  ? 

The  position  of  volition  in  the  progress  of  the  individual, 
in  his  life  history,  may  be  depicted  by  Fig.  XV.,  in  which 
the  environment  (i),  in  the  shape  of  suggestion  (2),  in 
impinging  upon  the  organism,  stimulates  to  volition 
(3),  which,  when  ratified  and  repeated,  gives  rise  to  habits 
(4),  and  these  habits  tend  to  become  automatic  reactions 
and  impulses,  only  to  come  in  contact  with  new  sugges- 
tions from  the  environment,  and  so  on.  Thus  the  life 
plan  becomes  fuller  and  wider.  I  have  used  the  spiral  to 
denote  this  progress,  which  is  continuous  throughout  the 
life  period.  Its  analogue  —  the  'life-spiral'  of  race  devel- 
opment—  is  given  in  the  next  figure  below. 

The  crisis  in  the  child's  motor  development,  which  is 
precipitated  by  persistent  imitation,  tends  to  come  again 
and  again  to  the  front  in  later  years  in  many  interesting 
situations.  The  following  game  of  my  children,  H.,  of 
five,  and  E.,  of  nearly  three  years,  reflects  perfectly  the 
elements  of  choice,  as  my  theory  of  the  origin  of  volition 
requires  them.  I  set  the  two  children  to  walking  fast 
around  an  oval  table  in  contrary  directions,  marking  the 
places  where  they  were  to  meet,  on  the  two  opposite  sides. 


;84 


The  Qj^igiu  of  Volition. 


with  chairs  drawn  up  to  the  table.  They  were  to  meet 
behind  the  first  chair,  shake  hands,  and  then  pass  on  to 
the  second  chair,  and  so  on.  On  coming  to  the  first  chair, 
the  smaller  girl,  E.,  was  so  impressed  with  the  process  of 
hand-shaking,  in  which  she  closely  imitated  her  sister,  and 
so  thoroughly  won   over  to  her  sister's    action,  that  she 


EaUt 


Environment 
{1) 
Fig.  XV.— Illustrating  Ontogenetic  Development. 

invariably  started  off  in  the  same  direction  with  her,  thus 
retracing  her  own  steps,  instead  of  passing  on  alone  to  the 
other  chair.  H.  remonstrated  with  her  again  and  again; 
and  the  child's  conflict  in  motor  impulses  was  instructive 
in  the  extreme.  She  always  took  at  least  one  step  with 
H.,  generally  more,  then  turned  and  started  off  alone  in  a 


Phylogc7ietic.  385 

hesitating  and  uncertain  way,  and  never  seemed  quite 
confident  until  she  saw  her  sister  coming  around  the  table 
to  meet  her  again. 

Here  it  is  easy  to  see  that  the  course  of  a  continued  sug- 
gestive reaction — walking  regularly  forward  —  is  brought 
into  conflict  with  the  new  copy  for  imitation,  supplied  by 
her  sister's  action.  There  arises  a  balance  of  motor  pro- 
cesses, attention  is  divided,  and  the  final  course  is  the  out- 
come of  a  co-ordination  of  these  rival  processes  in  the 
attention.  So  she  wills  —  and  it  is  a  real  act  of  will  — 
to  go  on  ^  around  the  table  alone,  but  only  after  the  great 
hesitation  or  embarrassment  which  is  a  true  indication  of 
deliberation. 

§  3.    PJiylogeJietic. 

Coming  to  look  at  the  place  of  volition  in  the  race  devel- 
opment of  consciousness,  we  find  that  the  determination  of 
the  method  of  its  rise  in  the  individual  is  instructive. 
Viewed  objectively,  a  mental  organism  is  subject,  at  any 
stage,  to  the  two  principles.  Habit  and  Accommodation, 
already  formulated  above.  Habit  represents  what  it  in- 
herits and  what  it  tends  most  naturally  to  do,  under  the 
guidance  of  all  experiences  up  to  date.  Accommodation 
represents  its  degree  of  openness  or  adaptability,  in  giving 
the  new    reactions,  which    new    stimulations    or   arrange- 

1  This  'game,'  which  became  very  popular  with  the  children,  was  really  an 
experiment  on  my  part,  suggested,  in  my  meditation  on  this  topic,  by  contrast 
to  an  earlier  experiment  which  I  tried  with  H.,  when  she  was  in  her  second 
and  third  years.  This  latter  was  an  attempt  to  bring  out  the  regularity  of  the 
operation  of  suggestion,  by  arranging  attractive  things  about  a  room,  so  that 
only  after  reaching  one  could  she  see  the  next,  etc.  I  found  her  the  victim, 
of  course,  to  this  device.  She  rushed  from  one  of  the  objects  to  another 
with  great  avidity. 

2  C 


386  The  Origin  of  Volition. 

ments  of  stimulations  call  upon  it  to  make.  Now  just  as 
in  the  child  the  phenomena  of  suggestion  became  more 
and  more  complex,  from  the  physiological  reflex  type  up 
to  the  ideo-motor,  deliberative,  and,  finally,  the  jDcrsistent 
type,  which  is  volition  ;  so,  in  the  animal  series,  there  is 
a  corresponding  development.  Volition  is  found  only  in 
animals  having  ideation,  memory,  desires.  Who  can  doubt 
that  the  dog  desires  the  morsel  which  he  holds  upon  his 
nose,  awaiting  his  master's  permission  to  eat  it  t  All  the 
conditions  of  desire  are  there ;  complex  representation, 
incipient  action,  and  inhibition.  And  who  can  doubt  that 
there  is  volition  when  he  gets  permission  and  eats  the 
morsel }  But  lower  in  the  scale,  such  cases  shade  down 
into  the  sphere  of  suggestion,  as  the  animal  becomes  less 
ideational,  less  social,  more  organic,  and  more  dependent 
upon  a  small  circle  of  stimulations. 

In  volition,  therefore,  we  find  the  point  of  meeting  of 
the  two  principles.  Habit  and  Accommodation,  and  their 
common  function.  It  is  through  volition  that  the  levelling 
effects  of  habit  are  counteracted  in  the  higher  orders  of 
life,  since  it  brings  possibilities  of  adjustment  to  absent 
and  distant  conditions,  and  so  wages  conflict  with  the 
dictates  of  present  sensation.  Yet  it  is  through  volition 
on  the  other  hand,  that  new  habits  are  formed.  Only  by 
the  continued  inhibitions  and  controls  of  volition  is  a  new 
action  which  is  still  hard  to  perform  preserved  amid  the 
pressing  urgencies  of  what  is  old  and  easy.  So  volition 
ministers  to  both  kinds  of  development,  and  sums  them 
up ;  and  so  justifies  both  its  survival  and  its  splendid 
eminence  among  all  the  survivals  in  the  mental  series. 

To  put  the  same  thought  from  the  point  of  view  of  any 
given  stage  of  evolution,  we  may  say  that  two  factors  are 


Phylogenetic. 


387 


potent  in  the  manifestations  of  the  character  of  the  or- 
ganism at  whatever  stage  :  endowment  and  environment. 
All  habits  add  to  endowment,  and  all  accommodations  are 
concessions  of  endowment  to  environment.  Now,  as  is 
seen  in  Fig.  XVI.,  the  environment  (i),  working  as  sugges- 
tion (2),  brings  about  a  new  volition  (3),  this  is  repeated 


Endowmentt  i  Habit 
Bin 


if 

Environment 
(2) 

Fig.  XVI.  — Illustrating  Phylogenetic  Development. 


by  persistent  reaction,  and  so  forms  habit  (4),  this  is 
added  to  endowment  (5),  by  heredity  or  natural  selection, 
and  so  constitutes  an  element  of  instinctive  character  (6), 
in  the  next  generation,  and  this  character  or  instinct,  in 
the  new  individual,  again  confronts  the  suggestions  of  the 
physical  and  moral  environment  (i).      So  we  have  in  the 


3^8  The  Origin  of  Volition. 

highest  exhibition  of  reflective  voHtion  no  departure  in 
type  —  however  v^ide  a  departure  it  be  in  meaning  and 
impUcations  for  philosophy —  from  the  first  adaptive  reac- 
tions of  organic  Hfe.  Habit  is  formed,  in  the  face  of  sug- 
gestion, through  persistent  imitation  and  volition,  and 
habit,  made  organic  in  character,  is  modified  in  turn  by 
changed  environment  which  is  reacted  to  by  imitation  and 
volition.  What  is  this  but  a  phylogenetic  exhibition  of 
the  *  circular  activity  '  seen  in  all  development  ?  —  just  what 
we  would  expect,  if  volition  is  really  a  new  more  complex 
form  of  the  interaction  of  Habit  and  Accommodation  in 
the  growth  of  the  individual. 

§  4.    Special  Evidence. 

Besides  the  very  high  presumption  that  volition,  con- 
sidered as  a  departure  in  the  mental  life,  arises  in  the 
way  of  a  new  adaptation  of  the  living  creature  to  its  sur- 
roundings, and  that  it  also  follows  the  law  of  accommoda- 
tion by  imitation  which  is  the  agent  of  all  the  earlier 
adaptations ;  and  besides  the  presumption  afforded  by 
the  great  reasonableness  of  the  view  as  based  upon  an 
adequate  analysis  of  desire  and  volition  —  besides  all  this, 
there  are  several  lines  of  objective  evidence  which  connect 
early  volition  directly  with  reactions  of  the  imitative  type. 

I.  In  the  first  place,  the  instances  of  so-called  pre- 
imitativc  volition  in  infants,  reported  by  various  observers, 
can  generally  be  explained  in  much  simpler  terms.  The 
categories  of  suggestion  which  I  have  marked  out  in  an 
earlier  chapter,  shading  off  into  one  another  as  they  do 
by  imperceptible  degrees,  seem  to  afford  plenty  of  latitude 
for  these  cases.     They  differ  greatly  from  the  well-defined 


special  Evidence.  389 

classes  of  movements  called  reflex,  impulsive,  automatic, 
etc.,  inasmuch  as  normal  suggestion  represents  a  side  of 
mental  growth  which  has  heretofore  gone  largely  unformu- 
lated. Reflex,  impulse,  instinct,  etc.,  all  represent  habit, 
but  they  all  presuppose  accommodation,  and  it  is  only  as 
we  get  some  kind  of  a  unifying  principle  of  accommoda- 
tion, that  the  partial  statements  of  the  law  of  habit  get  any 
common  significance.  Suggestion  is  the  accommodation 
side  of  growth,  all  the  way  up  to  the  most  vivid  forms  of 
consciousness,  and  imitation  is  certainly  —  in  its  conscious 
form  —  the  most  direct  form  of  suggestion.  And  even 
after  volition  ushers  in  a  higher  type  of  accommodation, 
suggestion  still  supplies  most  of  its  impetus.  So  when  it 
seems  impossible  to  assign  a  given  reaction  to  any  one  of 
the  categories  of  habit,  that  is  no  reason  for  leaping  at 
once  to  volition,  the  most  advanced  form  of  accommoda- 
tion ;  rather  ought  we  to  attempt  to  find  its  place  under 
suggestion,  which  is  the  simpler  form  of  accommodation. 

Accordingly,  we  may,  as  the  result  shows,  place  all  of 
the  infant's  so-called  'efforts,'  in  its  early  months,  under 
the  category  of  suggestion,  only  having  to  recognize  cer- 
tain cases  which  are,  more  evidently  than  others,  germi- 
nal to  volition.  My  child  E.,  early  in  her  second  month, 
strained  to  lift  her  head  at  the  sound  of  any  one  entering 
the  room,  and  in  her  fourth  month,  after  the  child  had  been 
frequently  lifted  to  a  sitting  posture  by  the  clasping  of 
her  hands  around  her  mother's  fingers,  the  mere  sight  of 
fingers  extended  before  her  made  her  grasp  at  them  and 
'attempt'  to  raise  herself.  Now,  as  it  happens,  it  is  just 
this  case  of  so-called  *  effort '  that  is  appealed  to  as  show- 
ing very  early  volition.     Preyer  says  :^  "We  may,  therefore, 

1  Mind  of  the  Child,  Vol.  I.,  p.  265. 


390  The  Origin  of  Volition. 

without  hesitation,  refer  the  period  of  the  first  distinct 
manifestation  of  the  activity  of  will  in  the  infant  in  this 
field,  to  that  week  in  which  the  head,  while  he  is  awake,  no 
longer  bobs  hither  and  thither  —  in  general,  the  fourth  to 
the  fifth  month."  That  is,  Preyer  holds  that  the  successful 
holding  up  of  the  head  is  voluntary,  while  the  various  un- 
successful attempts  of  the  child  to  do  so  were  possibly  not. 
These  earlier  '  efforts '  are  reactions  brought  about  by 
association  between  the  advantageous  sensations  secured 
through  sight,  taste,  etc.,  while  the  child  is  held  erect,  and 
the  muscular  sensations  of  erectness.  So  Preyer  holds, 
and  this  explanation  is,  I  think,  quite  correct  as  far  as  it 
goes.  But  as  to  this  particular  act,  I  find  these  'efforts' 
suggested  by  noises,  sights,  especially  by  personal  sugges- 
tions, at  such  an  early  age  that  the  reaction  for  erect 
posture  is  probably  to  be  considered  a  matter  of  native 
inherited  tendency,  just  as  the  walking  reflex  is.  So  that 
the  whole  thing  becomes  a  case  of  physiological  and  sen- 
sori-motor  suggestion.  And  even  when  acquired  com- 
pletely—  when  there  is  no  'bobbing  hither  and  thither'  — 
there  is  no  need  whatever  to  find  in  it,  as  Preyer  does, 
evidence  of  will.  We  adults  hold  our  heads  up  because 
our  normal  sensational  series,  especially  of  the  visual  and 
muscular  sensations,  and  their  correspondences,  have  been 
acquired  since  we  have  been  holding  our  heads  up,  and  so 
they  all  conspire  by  their  associative  influence  to  stimulate 
the  contractions  necessary  for  this  head  position.  There 
is  no  need  to  bring  in  volition,  or  even  attention.  And  it 
is  probable  that  these  associations  only  reinforce  the  native 
tendency  I  have  spoken  of.  Such  efforts,  therefore,  on 
the  part  of  the  child,  lack  deliberation,  and  all  but,  per- 
haps, the  faintest  glimmerings  of  desire. 


I 


special  Evidence,  391 

A  similar  account  may  be  given  of  'simple  imitation.' 
It  does  not  involve  volition  ;  it  is,  rather,  simple  ideo-motor 
suggestion  made  possible  by  associations  between  visual 
and  auditory  stimulations,  on  one  hand,  and  muscle  sen- 
sations on  the  other.  Here,  again,  I  differ  from  Preyer, 
instead  of  having  the  advantage  of  agreeing  with  him, 
which  the  following  quotation  seems  to  give  me.^  He 
says: 2  ''The  first  imitations  are  the  first  distinct,  repre- 
sented, and  willed  movements."  This  makes  all  imita- 
tions voluntary :  both  the  simple  and  the  persistent  forms. 
Now  Preyer  recognizes  such  a  distinction,  —  'spontaneous' 
and  '  deliberative  '  imitation  are  his  terms,  —  but  does 
nothing  with  the  distinction.  To  me  it  is  as  fundamental 
in  the  child's  development  as  the  distinction  between 
suggestion  and  volition,  between  reaction  and  conduct. 
Simple  imitation  falls  easily  under  suggestion,  because  it 
involves  no  memory,  necessarily,  no  selection,  no  variation, 
no  desire,  no  deliberation,  no  effort ;  only  a  sensation  and 
a  movement  in  organic  connection.  This  is  mere  habit. 
How  many  of  the  essentials  of  volition  does  the  parrot 
have,  or  the  young  bird  that  imitates  the  old  one's  flight } 
Why  should  these  acts  be  thought  voluntary.?  But  persist- 
ent imitation,  as  we  have  seen,  presents  new  problems :  the 
breaking  up  of  habit ;  vivid  selection  on  the  part  of  con- 
sciousness ;  the  new,  strenuous  experience  called  effort ; 
and  the  actual  accomplishment  of  the  new,  which  wc  call 
the  process  of  learning.  Indeed,  so  great  is  the  differ- 
ence, that  whenever  a  natural  history  view  of  consciousness, 
which  involves   continuous  development,  is   desired,  it   is 

1  Professor  Sully  called  my  attention  to  this  apparent  agreement.  See  his 
remarks,  Proc.  of  Cong,  of  Exp.  Psych.,  London  meeting,  1892,  p.  55. 

2  Preyer,  Mind  of  the  Child,  I.,  340. 


392  The  Origin  of  Volition. 

just  this  magnificent  appearance  of  discontinuity  which  is 
the  point  of  greatest  difficulty  ;  and  it  may  be  as  well  to 
remind  the  disciples  of  Maine  de  Biran,  Reid,  and  William 
James,  that  the  act  of  the  infant's  '  try-try-again '  gives 
them  their  golden  opportunity. 

These  instances  may  serve  to  show  the  way  in  which, 
as  I  think,  the  category  of  suggestion,  on  the  accommo- 
dation side  of  mental  development,  has  been  neglected, 
with  the  result  that  the  'psychologist's  fallacy'  has  been 
committed  regularly  by  those  who  have  read  volition  into 
the  infant's  consciousness  at  such  early  stages  of  its 
growth. 

As  far,  therefore,  as  cases  of  so-called  effort  shade 
downwards  into  suggestions,  they  are  properly  classified 
as  pre-volitional.  But  there  is  a  distinct  class  of  phe- 
nomena in  which  the  shading  is  the  reverse,  —  cases  in 
which  the  rudiments  of  volition  must  be  recos-nized  even 
in  the  absence  of  '  external  copies '  for  imitation.  This 
brings  us,  in  a  later  section,^  to  the  child's  imitation  of  its 
own  memories  and  imaginations,  and  to  those  cases  which 
illustrate  the  relation  of  'organic'  and  'plastic'  imitation 
to  volition. 

11.  The  results  of  a  research  on  students,  which  I  re- 
port elsewhere^  under  the  title,  'Persistent  Imitation 
Experiments.'  The  subject  is  told  to  imitate  a  simple 
figure,  called  the  'copy,'  set  before  him,  drawing  in  pencil 
or  chalk,  at  a  single  stroke.  Then  he  compares  his  per- 
formance with  the  copy  and  tries  again  ;  and  so  on,  until 

1  Below,  §  5  of  this  chapter. 

2  See  Proc.  of  Cong,  of  Exp.  Psychology,  London,  August,  1892,  p.  51,  for 
first  statement,  and  details  with  discussion  in  The  Psychological  Review,  II., 
1895. 


special  Evidence, 


393 


satisfied  with  the  result.  This  clone,  the  number  of  his 
efforts  is  noted.  This  I  may  call  in  the  tables  (VIII.,  IX.) 
the  case  'with  comparison.'  Then  he  is  instructed  to  go 
through  the  same  experiment  again,  except  that  his  eyes 
are  now  bandaged,  so  that  he  is  not  able  to  compare  his 

TABLE   VIII. 


Copy. 

Will  Stimulus 
(Av.  No.  of  Efforts 
in  Each  Experi- 
ment). 

No.  of 
Experiments. 

No.  of 
Persons. 

a.  External  visual,  with  comparison 

b.  External  visual,  without  compar- 

ison     

c.  Memory  image  after  ten  minutes, 

with  comparison 

d.  Memory  image  after  ten  minutes, 

without  comparison 

e.  Memory  image  after  fifteen  min- 

utes, with  comparison 

/  Memory  image  after  fifteen  min- 
utes, without  comparison    .  .  . 

3-571 

|-  ratio   1.72 

2.09  J 

^-  1 

I  ratio  1.60 
1.27J 

5-661 

1.  ratio  1.55 

3-66J 

51 

6 

6 

4 

I 

Persistent  Imitation  Experiments:   A.  Influence  of  comparison  =  increase 
of  will  stimulus  from  about  75%  to  50%  according  to  lapse  of  time. 


own    results    with    the   copy.     The  number   of   efforts   is 
noted  as  before.     This  is  the  case  'without  comparison.' 

Now  it  is  evident  that  the  relative  number  of  'efforts' 
in  each  case  may  be  taken  to  indicate  the  amount  of 
tendency  the  subject  has  to  continue  the  imitation,  —  a 
quantity  technically  known  as  'will  stimulus.'  The  results 
given  in  the  tables  show  that  in  the  case  '  without  com- 


394 


The  Origin  of  Volition. 


parison '  the  subject  is  liable  to  be  satisfied  with  a  smaller 
number  of  efforts  ;  this  would  indicate  that  when  the  new 
visual  picture  is  not  reported,  there  is  not  the  same  will 
stimulus.  But  in  the  other  case,  'with  comparison,'  effort 
after  effort  is  made,  until  success  is  attained,  or  until 
the  subject  gives  it  up;  so  the  inference  is  that  there  is 
then  continued  will  stimulus  until  either  the  motor  plu- 
rality is  overcome,  or  the  stimulus  effect  is  itself  inhibited 

TABLE   IX. 


Copy. 

Will  Stimulus 
(Av.  No.  of  Efforts 
in  Each  Experi- 
ment.) 

No.  of 
Experiments. 

No.  of 
Persons. 

a.  External  visual,  with  comparison 

b.  Memory  image  after  ten  minutes, 

with  comparison 

c.  Memory  image  after  one  minute, 

without  comparison 

d.  Memory  image  after  ten  minutes, 

without  comparison 

3-571 

^  ratio  1.79 
2.      J 

2.091 

-ratio  1.65 
1.27  J 

51 

30 
51 
30 

6 

4 
6 

4 

Persistent  Imitation  Experiments:  B.  Diminution  of  motor  force  of 
memory  after  ten  minutes  =  from  about  60%  to  80%,  according  as  com- 
parison is  made,  or  not,  of  results  with  memory  image. 


by  discouragement.  The  figures  (Table  VIII.,  A)  show 
that  in  the  case  of  comparison  there  is  an  increase  of  from 
75  per  cent,  down  to  50  per  cent,  in  the  will  stimulus  for 
memory  durations  from  one  down  to  ten  minutes. 

Table  IX.,  B.  shows  the  further  interesting  result  that  if 
the  external  'copy'  be  removed  and  the  subject  rely  upon 
his  memory,  the  number  of  efforts  tends  to  decrease  in 
some  ratio  with  the  length  of  time  elapsed.     This  is  what 


special  Evidence.  395 

we  should  expect  from  other  experiments  on  the  faithful- 
ness of  memory  ^  which  show  that  the  memory  process 
loses  its  definite  character  with  time.  The  figures  show 
a  diminution  of  the  motor  force  of  a  memory  after  ten 
minutes  from  about  60  per  cent,  to  80  per  cent.,  accord- 
ing as  comparison  of  results  with  the  memory  image  is 
made  or  not. 

This  investigation  gives  evidence  of  the  necessity  for 
motor  co-ordination — what  is  called  'comparison'  —  in 
the  antecedents  to  voluntary  movement.  This  is  the 
essential  contention  of  the  doctrine  of  the  genesis  of 
volition  stated  above ;  and  it  is  interesting  to  find  that  in 
our  adult  life  our  choices  are  still  backed  in  a  regular 
way  by  that  dynamogenic  agency  which  I  call  '  will 
stimulus.' 

III.  Another  kind  of  evidence  is  found  in  the  behaviour 
of  the  attention.  In  a  great  class  of  pathological  cases  of 
anaesthesia  which  involves  paralysis  when  the  eyes  or  ears 
are  closed,  but  not  when  they  are  open  —  we  find  evidence 
that  disturbances  of  attention  bring  about  derangements  of 
voluntary  movement.  This  may  occur  even  when  the  pa- 
tient keeps  intact  all  the  apparatus  of  movement,  and  all 
the  memories  of  the  movements  which  he  desires  to  make. 

1  Experiments  on  memory  faithfulness  have  been  made  by  Wolfe,  by 
Ebbinghaus,  by  Miiller,  and  by  Warren  and  myself  (^Proceedings  of  the  Avier. 
Psych.  Assoc,  1893,  P-  ^S;  see  also  The  Psychological  Revieiv,  1895,  where 
the  results  of  these  '  Persistent  Imitation  Experiments  '  are  to  be  reported  and 
discussed).  The  method  of  testing  memory  by  measuring  the  amount  of 
motor  force  or  'will  stimulus'  possessed  by  memories  of  various  duration,  was 
first  proposed  by  me  in  connection  with  these  experiments  (see  Proceedings  of 
Cong,  of  Exp.  Psychol,  2d  Session,  London,  1892,  p.  51).  In  the  paper 
referred  to  as  soon  to  be  published,  this  method  is  called  the  *  dynamogenic 
method,'  and  a  correlation  is  suggested  between  the  relative  motor  force  of  a 
memory,  after  a  certain  interval,  and  its  degree  of  faithfulness  to  its  original 
perception,  after  the  same  interval. 


39^  The  Origin  of  Volitio7i. 

And  the  result  is  sometimes  reversed,  a  patient  may  be  able 
to  move  a  member  except  when  he  sees  it.  Here  the  visual 
images  inhibit  the  movement.^  In  the  former  case,  the 
attention  has  become  dependent  for  certain  voluntary 
functions,  upon  immediate  visual  or  auditory  stimulation, 
and  in  its  absence,  these  voluntary  functions  are  impos- 
sible.^ This  shows  that  a  degree  of  correlation  of  optical, 
kinsesthetic,  auditory,  etc.,  impressions  is  necessary  for 
voluntary  movement,  and  that  this  correlation  is  here,  as 
everywhere  else,  a  function  of  the  attention.  In  normal 
voluntary  movement,  attention  need  not  be  given  neces- 
sarily to  the  muscular  movement  itself,  — although  that  is 
one  type  of  voluntary  attention,  —  but  it  may  be  given  to 
some  other  kind  of  sensation,  auditory,  visual,  etc.,  which 
has  come  to  play  the  leading  part  in  this  particular  move- 
ment, and  under  the  lead  of  which  the  correlation  which 
issues  in  movement  is  effected. 

More  is  said  of  this  below  in  the  general  theory  of  volun- 
tary movement;^  but  here  it  may  be  noted  how  clearly 
this  accords  with  what  we  found  above  to  be  the  behaviour 
of  the  child's  attention  in  performing  its  first  voluntary 
drawings.  His  attention  has  to  be  fastened  upon  the 
thing  or  *  copy '  imitated,  not  on  his  hand,  nor  on  his 
memories  of  movement.  Passy  finds  that  a  young  child 
copies  a  new  thing  or  copy  by  giving  attention  to  his 
visual  memory  pictures.  This  is  shown,  as  I  have  said 
above,  by  the  fact  that  he  puts  into  his  drawing,  certain 

1  Janet,  Un  cas  d^Aboulie,  Revue  Philos.,  March,  1891. 

2  See  Binet  and  Fere,  who  report  a  patient  who  could  thrust  out  his  tongue 
only  when  he  saw  it  in  a  mirror,  Arch,  de  Physiologie,  1887,  II.,  p.  371;  Pick, 
Zeitsch,  fiir  Physiologic,  IV.,  1892,  161  ff.,  and  Baldwin,  Philos.  Review,  IL, 
1893,  p.  206. 

8  Below,  Chap.  XV.,  §§  3,  4. 


special  Evidence.  397 

features  such  as  ears,  arms,  and  minor  details,  which  are 
not  in  the  actual  thing  or  copy,  but  only  in  his  own  earlier 
visual  pictures.  So  I  find  that  in  imitating  new  words,  there 
is  a  constant  tendency  on  the  part  of  the  child,  to  reproduce 
terms  he  already  knows  in  place  of  the  words  of  the  new 
lesson.  In  imitating  speech  also,  the  child  does  not  learn 
by  paying  attention  to  the  hps  of  the  speaker.  He  often 
learns  the  guttural  letters,  which  are  not  spoken  with  the 
lips,  sooner  than  many  of  the  others.^  Much  less  does  he 
pay  attention  to  his  own  lips  ;  from  all  appearances  he 
does  not  know  that  he  is  using  his  lips.  The  most  that 
lip  sensations  or  memories  do  is  to  supply  to  him  the  series 
of  associations  which  follow  upon  the  auditory  stimulations. 
It  is  these  last  to  which  he  pays  attention. 

Cases  are  abundant  not  only  in  which  aphasia  follows 
lesions  of  the  auditory  centre,  but  in  which  it  follows  le- 
sions located  in  the  connections  between  the  auditory  and 
the  word-seeing  and  word-hearing  centres.  Such  a  lesion 
interferes  with  the  correlative  or  associative  function.  And 
it  is  extraordinarily  suggestive  of  the  new  function  found  in 
persistent  imitation,  that  while  this  latter  often  becomes 
impossible,  in  these  cases,  yet  the  simple  imitative  copying 
of  sounds  heard  or  movements  seen,  may  still  take  place. 
Simple  ideo-motor  suggestion,  as  typified  in  simple  imita- 
tion, remains  intact ;  but  persistent  imitation  effort,  the 
correlation  involved  in  voluntary  attention  and  movement, 
all  this  is  lost. 

Janet  thinks  ^  the  incapacity  to  touch  and  handle  objects 
in  certain  cases,  is  inversely  as  the  degree  of  recognition  or 
familiarity  with  the  objects,  their  uses,  etc.  ;  which  is  to 
say,  —  when  we  come  to  understand  that  recognition  may 

1  See  Tracy,  Psychology  of  Childhood.  -  Loc.  cit. 


398  The  Origin  of  Volition, 

itself  be  simply  a  motor  attitude  or  tendency  of  attention, 
—  that  the  patient's  ability  depends  largely  upon  the 
degree  of  involuntariness  of  attention,  that  is,  of  the 
degree  of  simple  habit  of  attending. 

In  view  of  what  has  now  been  said,  the  real  difference 
between  what  is  voluntary  and  what  is  not  becomes  very 
emphatic,  and  we  have  the  key,  I  think,  to  the  under- 
standing of  total  aboulia,  or  lack  of  will,  in  cases  of  dis- 
ease ;  and  partial  aboulia,  seen  in  the  loss  of  particular 
voluntary  functions,  such  as  speech,  writing,  etc.^  These 
matters  furnish  a  further  line  of  evidence  which  I  shall 
now  put  forward. 

IV.  Evidence  from  aboulia,  partial  or  total,  may  now  be 
brought.  The  general  principle  of  mental  pathology  that 
the  dissolution  of  complex  functions  follows  the  inverse 
order  of  their  acquisition,  applies  to  the  voluntary  activi- 
ties in  two  ways. 

First,  we  should  find  stages  of  degeneration  correspond- 
ing to  the  great  epochs  of  mental  development  seen  in  the 
phylogenetic  or  race  series  ;  this  would  seem  to  require 

1  While  not  able  to  speak  as  an  expert  in  Mental  Pathology,  I  yet  venture  to 
express  the  opinion  that  there  is  only  a  difference  of  degree  between  the  com- 
plete loss  of  will,  the  inability  to  make  effort  or  to  inhibit  impulse,  called  aboulia, 
and  some  cases  of  the  loss  of  particular  voluntary  functions  only, — giving 
aphasia,  agraphia,  etc.,  —  despite  the  apparent  difference  that,  in  these  latter 
cases,  mental  determination  or  effort  to  do  the  act  in  question  remains  unim- 
paired. The  patient  in  agraphia,  it  might  be  said,  makes  effort  to  write, 
but  fails;  his  will  is  healthy,  only  his  handwriting  fails.  On  the  contrary,  the 
function  called  will  really  gets  its  right  to  be  from  the  co-ordination  of  simpler 
functions,  its  stability  and  force  must  depend  upon  the  support  it  gets  from 
these  simpler  co-ordinations  or  functions;  and  the  derangement  of  any  one 
of  them,  such  as  handwriting,  —  unless  of  course  the  lesion  be  peripheral,  — 
must  withdraw  support  from  the  whole,  and  so  weaken  the  function  of  will 
generally.  We  are  all  aboulic  just  to  the  degree  in  which  our  attentive  co- 
ordinations are  unstable  and  independent  of  one  another.  This  seems  to  be 
required  on  any  psycho-physical  conception  of  will.     Cf.  Chap.  XV. 


special  Evidence,  399 

that  voluntary  action  should  be  impaired  by  a  less  serious 
derangement  than  simple  suggestive  reactions  ;  and  that 
the  derangement  of  the  ideo-motor  should  precede  that  of 
the  sensori-motor.  Also  that  these  last,  which  involve  clear 
consciousness,  might  be  damaged  or  absent  while  reflex 
functions  still  remain,  and  that,  last  of  all,  the  rhythmic, 
so-called  automatic  processes,  which  are  necessary  to  life 
in  general,  should  remain  alone  upon  the  field.  All  of 
these  propositions,  except  the  first,  which  concerns  volun- 
tary action,  are  such  commonplaces  in  psychology  as  well 
as  in  physiology,  that  I  need  mention  them  only  to  give 
new  confirmation  to  the  great  features  of  the  phylogenetic 
and  ontogenetic  parallelism  on  the  side  of  mind. 

But,  second,  this  progressive  impairment  of  mental  fac- 
ulty in  the  individual  repeats  inversely  the  process  by 
which  the  individual  himself  learns  his  lessons  in  action. 
The  man  retrogrades  literally  into  second  childhood,  both 
in  regard  to  his  power  of  mind  as  a  whole,  and  in  regard 
to  the  particular  elements  of  any  distinct  functions  which 
happen  to  be  affected  by  disease  or  accident. 

These  two  cases  illustrate  the  two  very  distinct  and  in- 
structive phases  of  voluntary  failure,  already  characterized 
as  total  and  partial  aboulia.  In  the  former  case,  the  im- 
pairment is  general,  extending  to  the  co-ordinating  function 
as  a  whole,  and  so  involving  each  particular  activity  equally. 
The  old  man  writes  tremblingly,  speaks  falteringly,  recog- 
nizes faces  and  things  badly,  walks  haltingly,  —  all  of  which 
follow  from  the  fact  that  he  is  able  to  attend  only  par- 
tially and  fitfully.  In  partial  aboulia,  on  the  other  hand, 
one  special  function  is  impaired,  or  more  ;  the  rest  remain 
intact.  Here  belong  sensory  aphasia,  agraphia,  arising 
from  arterial  obstructions,  central  lesion,  etc.     Some  par- 


400  The  Origin  of  Volition, 

ticular  prop  to  the  attention  gets  knocked  away,  and  so 
one  line  of  voluntary  activity  is  seriously  injured  or  de- 
stroyed ;  but  the  co-ordination  of  the  other  brain  seats  is 
still  intact,  and  their  functions  are  weakened  only  to  the 
degree  in  which  their  structure  of  attention  also  rested 
upon  this  prop. 

Both  these  cases  of  loss  or  impairment  of  will  may  be 
put  in  evidence  as  showing  the  place  of  volition  in  mental 
development,  provided  only  the  law  be  true  that  mind 
degenerates  in  the  same  order  as  it  grows,  only  back- 
wards ;  that  is,  that  the  function  which  it  acquires  latest, 
it  loses  first  and  most  easily.  We  then  have  to  ask  what 
the  actual  facts  of  mental  pathology  are  which  show  con- 
ditions of  the  impairment  of  will. 

Considering  total  aboulia  first,  the  condition  of  general 
levelling  down  or  decay  of  the  mental  faculties,  gives  us 
our  instances.  There  are  three  recognized  cases  of  such 
general  mental  break-down,  all  involving  total  or  progres- 
sive aboulia ;  first,  destruction  of  the  cerebral  hemispheres, 
corresponding  to  their  removal  from  animals  by  the  experi- 
mental physiologists ;  second,  temporary  subsidence  of  con- 
sciousness under  the  influence  of  drugs,  or  in  derangement 
of  the  vaso-motor  mechanism,  as  in  faintness,  trance,  fits, 
etc.  ;  and  third,  diseases  distinctly  recognized  as  mental, 
such  as  hysteria,  of  which  the  universal  symptoms  are 
certain  derangements  of  consciousness,  enfeebled  attention, 
remarkable  perversions  of  movement,  etc.  To  these  must 
be  added  idiocy  or  congenital  mental  defect.^     Looking  at 

1  I  omit  the  phenomena  of  old  age,  since  neither  physiologists  nor  psy- 
chologists have  given  them  any  very  fruitful  study.  The  appearance  of 
what  seems  to  be  increased  power  of  will  —  self-will  —  in  old  persons,  is 
perhaps  due  to  the  great  strengthening  of  habit,  together  with  the  general 
narrowness  of  consciousness. 


special  Evidciice.  401 

each  of  these  four  cases,  we  find  very  evident  confirmation 
of  the  view  of  volition  explained  in  the  foregoing  pages. 

In  the  various  experiments  recorded  of  extirpation  of 
the  hemispheres,  the  phenomena  now  well  known  by  the 
phrases  'psychic-blindness,'  'psychic-deafness,'  etc.,  appear. 
These  phrases  are  contrasted  with  '  cortical '  blindness, 
deafness,  etc.  In  the  former,  the  animal  loses  all  his 
sense  of  the  meaning,  associations,  value,  of  what  he  sees 
and  hears.  He  still  sees  and  hears,  and  he  still  has 
reactions  appropriate  to  sight  and  hearing ;  but  he  does 
not  show  the  reactions  peculiar  to  what  he  has  learned,  in 
all  his  life,  about  what  he  sees  and  hears.  After  certain 
operations  upon  his  brain  the  dog  sees  a  whip,  but  is  no 
longer  afraid  of  it ;  sees  food,  but  no  longer  moves  forward 
to  secure  it ;  hears  a  voice,  but  no  longer  recognizes  it. 
What  psychologists  mean  by  '  apperception  '  —  the  tinder- 
standmg  of  a  thing,  as  opposed  to  the  mere  seeing  or  hear- 
ing of  it  —  this  is  gone.  The  thing  seen  or  heard  is  no 
longer  a  co-ordinated  thing,  built  up  of  memories,  varied 
sensations,  motor  dynamogenies,  and  pleasures  or  pains  ; 
but  it  is  a  bare,  worthless  stimulus  to  reflex  or  suggestive 
reaction. 

Lack  of  co-ordination  }  Then  lack  of  attention,  lack  of 
persistence,  of  effort,  of  volition !  '  Exactly,'  says  the 
brainless  pigeon,  'that  is  what  I  lack.'  Attention,  effort, 
volition  —  these  are  the  motor  correlatives  of  the  co-ordi- 
nations of  memories  with  present  sensations,  the  motor 
correlatives  of  association,  of  apperception.  Lack  on  one 
side,  the  sensory,  then  a  fortiori  lack  on  the  other,  the 
motor.  The  motor  it  is,  exactly,  which  holds  the  sensory 
elements  together.  The  creature  shows,  in  fact,  no  com- 
plex activity,  no  curiosity,  no  constancy  of  attention,  no 

2  D 


402  The  Origin  of  Volition. 

persistence  in  his  undertakings  —  indeed,  no  undertakings, 
no  adaptation  to  new  conditions.  He  lacks  all  means  of 
taking  care  of  himself,  and  perishes  of  hunger  with  food 
under  his  nose. 

Now  substitute  men  for  dogs  and  pigeons,  and  substi- 
tute disease  or  drugs  for  the  operator,  and  you  have,  in 
cases  of  varying  clearness,  cases  of  general  progressive 
aboulia  in  man ;  all  those  cases  in  which  consciousness 
subsides  into  the  depths  of  mere  vague  feltness,  so  to 
speak,  of  sensations  coming  in  and  movements  made  upon 
them.  Two  typical  instances  may  be  cited,  the  two  for 
which  we  have  exact  observations.  One  of  these  is  the 
rather  obscure  phenomenon  of  'Jacksonian  re-evolution,' 
and  the  other  is  the  fact,  equally  obscure  until  very 
recently,  of  hysteria. 

By  '  re-evolution '  is  meant  gradual  recovery  from  a 
swoon  or  fit  of  such  a  gross  character  that  the  mental 
faculties  had  given  way,  and  the  patient  had  become  all 
but  unconscious.  It  is  evident  that  in  such  cases,  in 
which  the  recovery  is  comparatively  slow,  tests  may  be 
applied  at  intervals  to  discover  the  order  in  which  the 
various  functions  return  ;  this  order  will  evidently  repre- 
sent the  inverse  order  of  their  loss  in  the  fit,  and  so  the 
original  order  of  their  development. 

A  recent  case  reported  by  Pick,^  furnishes  perhaps  the 
most  careful  and  detailed  observations  yet  made  on  the 
re-evolution  of  the  function  of  speech  —  a  function  which, 
by  reason  of  its  complexity,  lends  itself  to  recovery 
by  stages.  Four  stages  were  found  in  this  epileptic 
patient's  recovery  from  complete  unconsciousness  :  first, 
no  response  whatever  to  words  spoken  or  written ;  second, 

1  Archiv  fiir  Psychiatrie,  XXII.,  heft  3,  pp.  25  ff. 


special  Evidence.  403 

the  parrot-like  repetition  of  words  heard  (an  imitative 
condition  called  ccJiolalia ;  the  man  could  strike  a  match 
only  when  he  saw  some  one  else  strike  one)  ;  third,  a  dazed 
sort  of  reply  by  counter-questions  ;  and  fourth,  intelligent 
speech  with  voluntary  forming  of  sentences. 

The  evidence  from  such  cases  as  this  as  to  the  place 
of  volition  in  the  evolution  scale  is  self-evident.  The 
first  form  of  response,  echolalia,  is  simple  verbal  imitation, 
i.e.,  sensori-motor  suggestion  from  a  brain-level  below  the 
cortex.  It  involves  no  extended  associations.  The  next 
stage  represents,  I  think,  a  groping  of  the  man  after 
coherence,  agreement,  co-ordination;  just  as  the  child  gets 
dissatisfied  with  his  simple  imitations,  has  a  sense  of  dawn- 
ing capacity  to  identify,  compare,  and  select,  of  a  tendency 
to  be  a  willing  being ;  and  gropes  toward  the  next  stage  of 
development.  Then  comes  the  recovery  of  the  centres  and 
their  connections.  The  man's  associative  channels  open 
up  and  the  currents  flow  in  and  out.  He  remembers  his 
word-meanings,  compares  them,  feels  the  proper  energies 
tingle  in  lip  and  tongue  in  co-ordinate  movement,  and 
so  reaches  voluntary  speech  again.  In  short,  volition  in 
speech  has  come  back  on  the  basis  of  simple  imitation, 
through  a  period  of  tentative  trial  and  effort  to  co-ordinate 
movements.  Could  there  be  a  reconstruction  in  plainer 
terms  of  the  child's  attainment  of  voluntary  speech 
through  imitations,  tentative  and  then  repeated  ;  or  a 
plainer  demonstration  that  the  normal  way  of  volition  is 
through  imitation  } 

The  other  case  —  the  general  phenomena  of  hysteria  in 
their  varied  combinations  —  may  be  spoken  of  only  in  a 
general  way,  since  the  quotation  of  observations  would 
be  too   lengthy.     As   an   authority,    I   appeal,   as    I    have 


404  The  Origin  of  Volition, 

already  done,  to  Prof.  Pierre  Janet,  whose  works  ^  are 
more  psychological  than  those  of  most  professed  alienists, 
and  who,  unlike  many  of  the  rest,  is  aware  that  there 
are  philosophical  problems  in  the  world,  no  less  than 
medical.  At  the  end  of  a  recent  discussion  of  '  Defi- 
nitions of  Hysteria,'  he  concludes  by  himself  defining 
hysteria  thus :  ^  "A  disease  especially  characterized  by 
mental  symptoms  of  which  the  principal  are  enfeeblement 
of  the  faculty  of  mental  synthesis  ;  retraction  of  the  field 
of  consciousness ;  the  disappearance  of  a  certain  num- 
ber of  elementary  phenomena  —  called  stigmata  —  from 
consciousness  and  from  personal  perception  ;  a  tendency 
to  the  permanent  and  complete  division  of  personality ; 
the  formation  of  many  independent  groups  of  phenomena  ; 
the  co-existence  of  these  systems  with  each  other  or  their 
alteration  by  each  other,  giving  rise  to  crises,  somnam- 
bulisms, subconscious  actions,  and  finally,  through  the 
defect  of  synthesis,  the  formation  of  certain  parasitic  ideas 
whose  development  is  so  complete  and  independent  that 
they  break  up  all  normal  control  of  consciousness  and 
manifest  themselves  in  various  troubles  of  a  physical  and 
accidental  sort." 

From  this  definition  and  from  the  description  of  the 
phenomena  by  Charcot  and  other  writers,  we  may  say 
that  the  outstanding  psychological  characteristics  of  such 
mental  degeneracy  are :  (i)  '  enfeeblement  of  the  faculty 
of  psychic  synthesis'  ;  (2)  loss  of  control  and  direction  of 
the  mental  life  ;    (3)  the  breaking  up  of  the  material  of 

^  AutomatistJie  psychologique,  Etats  Mentals  des  I/ysierigues  (2  vols.), 
Quelqiies  Definitions  Recentes  de  V Hyst'erie  in  Arch,  de  Neurologie^  Juin  et 
Juillet,  1893. 

2  See  pp.  49,  50  of  the  paper  cited  last  in  the  preceding  note. 


special  Evidence.  405 

personality,  and  the  possible  formation  of  several  inde- 
pendent psychic  groups,  either  successive  or  existing 
together;  (4)  an  enormous  development  of  the  tendency 
to  imitation  ;  (5)  the  growth  of  mental  suggestibility,  tend- 
ing to  the  complete  dominion  of  controlling  ideas  and  im- 
perative movements,  all  of  which  are  summed  up  in  the 
last  characteristic  ;  (6)  general  and  progressive  aboulia. 

Here,  again,  we  note  at  once,  that  with  enfeeblement 
of  mental  synthesis  goes  increased  suggestibility,  which 
takes  the  form,  whenever  possible,  of  direct  imitation. 
And,  further,  we  find  the  process  of  re-evolution  striving 
to  do  its  proper  work  in  the  tendency  of  the  separate 
groups  of  psychic  facts  to  get  themselves  the  appearance 
to  personality  by  partial  synthesis.  As  James  puts  it, 
they  'tend  to  personal  form.*  What  is  this  but  the 
reverse  way  of  mental  growth,  whose  terms  are  simple 
suggestion,  —  sensori-motor  and  ideo-motor,  —  imitation, 
synthesis,  which  last,  in  its  various  stages,  illustrates  the 
growing  success  of  effort,  and  the  growing  independence 
of  the  one  great  synthesis  whose  pre-eminence  stands  for 
stable  personality  and  intelligent  volition  } 

The  absence  of  effort  in  certain  cases  is  shown  in  the 
fact  that  the  patients  are  often  unable  to  learn  any  new 
movements,  although  they  can  perform,  in  response  to  a 
suggestion,  those  which  have  become  habits,^  —  just  the 
condition  of  the  child  before  its  first  *  persistent '  imita- 
tions. 

A  further   remarkable   confirmation   of   the    distinction 

1  Janet  (^Aui.  psy.,  p.  64)  calls  this  condition,  on  the  memory  side,  'antero- 
grade amnesia'  —  an  unfortunate  phrase.  It  is  simply,  as  far  as  action  is 
concerned,  general  '  apraxia,'  or  the  inability  to  effect  the  synthesis  necessary 
for  a  movement,  through  failure  of  some  of  the  memories  which  go  into  the 
synthesis. 


4o6  The  Origin  of  Volition. 

between  voluntary  and  involuntary  imitation  is  seen  in  the 
phenomena  of  unconscious  writing,  from  which  the  hypoth- 
esis of  '  secondary  personality '  gets  some  support.  The 
anaesthetic  hands  of  certain  blind-folded  patients  respond 
in  writing  appropriately,  either  in  lines  of  habit,  or  by 
imitative  repetition.  Not  only  are  the  movements  here 
involuntary  ;  they  are  also  quite  unconscious.^  And  the 
view  that  the  attention  and  the  co-ordination  which  it 
effects  are  the  real  vehicle  of  volition  is  shown  in  the 
negative  2  fact,  that  as  soon  as  the  patients  are  allowed 
to  see  the  limbs  in  question,  which  they  know  to  be 
paralytic,  no  response  whatever  from  these  limbs  can 
be  secured.  This  belongs  to  the  theory  of  '  control ' 
taken  up  in  a  later  connection. ^  Furthermore,  the  anaes- 
thetic hand,  hidden  behind  a  screen,  will  imitate  the 
movements  made  by  the  patient  voluntarily  with  the 
un-anaesthetic  hand,  giving  what  may  be  called  acquired 
'accompanying  movements.'*  And  yet  again,  the  anaes- 
thetic hand  traces  out,  when  a  pencil  is  put  into  it,  and 
it  is  left  undisturbed,  mental  pictures  as  they  exist  in  the 
subconsciousness  of  the  owner  of  the  hand,  what  I  have 
called,  in  the  case  of  the  child,  simple  *  tracery-imitation.' 
The  development  of  this  tendency  under  the  law  of  habit 
accounts,  by  the  way,  for  all  the  'intelligent'  results  of 
planchette  writing. 

1  See  Binet  and  Fere,  Arch,  de  Phys.,  iSyy,  II.,  pp.  339  ff.,  and  Binet,  Les 
Alterations  de  la  Personalite. 

2  Negative,  i.e.,  to  the  other  remarkable  case  of  patients  who  cannot  move 
the  limbs  unless  they  do  see  them.  In  the  cases  now  cited,  voluntary  move- 
ment is  impossible,  and  the  incapacity  is  extended  by  suggestion  to  the  invol- 
untary movements  of  the  organ  upon  which  the  attention  is  fixed.  For  the 
other,  contrasted,  cases  see  the  reference  given  in  the  next  note. 

3  See  Chap.  XV.,  §  4,  below. 

*  Binet  and  Fere,  loc.  cit.,  340-345. 


Jl 


special  Evidence .  407 

Cases  of  congenital  mental  defect,  of  which  idiocy  and 
imbecility  are  the  extremes,  teach  us  about  the  same 
thing.  Weak-minded  children  are  notably  different  from 
other  children  in  two  things  :  the  difference  in  the  character 
of  their  early  movements,  and  the  difference  in  their  abilit)^ 
to  learn  new  movements.  In  regard  to  the  first  point : 
their  movements  are  abrupt,  undisciplined,  isolated  from 
the  rest  of  the  organic  happenings,  jerky,  and  essentially 
unaccountable.  The  normal  child  gets  disciplined  by  his 
first  experiences,  and  his  movements  show  the  subduing 
and  regulating  effects  of  all  kinds  of  suggestion.  But 
the  child  which  we  call,  in  varying  degrees,  *  natural,'  is 
not  so  ;  much  that  we  mean  by  acquired  nervous  inhibition 
is  wanting,  and  the  character  of  the  movements  becomes 
at  once  an  index  of  the  mental  state.  He  imitates  well, 
but  repeats  his  imitations  without  modification.  He  lacks 
voluntary  power  both  for  action  and  for  control. 

This  characteristic  leads  at  once  to  the  second :  the 
child  fails  to  learn.  He  progresses  as  far  as  the  natural 
growth  of  the  organism  carries  him.  All  his  senses  may 
be  perfect ;  his  vegetative  processes  normal ;  his  reflexes 
good;  his  native  reactive  couples  responsive.  This  means, 
in  general,  that  he  grows  well,  up  to  the  simple,  imitative 
stage  ;  then  he  stops  !  Stops  where,  in  the  reverse  pivcess 
of  luileaming,  the  hysteric  and  hypnotic  patients  stop ! 
He  gets  a  few  useful  associations  drilled  into  him  by  force 
of  habit.  He  may  come  to  do  the  simpler  things  which 
he  sees  others  do,  and  make  the  simpler  word  sounds 
which  others  make.  But  he  does  not  initiate  anything, 
does  not  learn  by  his  own  effort.  He  is  like  the  brainless 
pigeon.  Idiots  are  generally  very  imitative.  Imbeciles 
are  lower  still  ;  if  they  get  any  form  in  the  sounds  they 
emit,  it  is  only  what  Seglas  calls  '  reflex  echolalia.' 


4o8  The   Origin  of  Volition. 

I  think  this  indicates  very  fairly,  in  these  poor  defec- 
tives, about  the  condition  of  things  which  we  have  found 
in  cases  of  hysterical  and  cataleptic  degeneracy.  Here  is 
the  same  lack  of  mental  synthesis,  so-called  mental  blind- 
ness, deafness,  dumbness,^  the  exaggeration  of  unruly 
movements,  inability  to  acquire  anything  new,  excessive 
imitation,  general  suggestibility.  The  idiot  lacks  the 
*  third-level '  co-ordination,  just  as  all  the  rest  do.  Volun- 
tary inhibition  is  gone,  and  a  measure  of  involuntary 
inhibition,  also.  Attention  is  weakened,  vacillating,  in- 
constant. Heredity  defect  has  done,  in  this  case,  what 
disease  has  done  in  the  other  cases,  i.e.,  drawn  a  sharp 
line  between  action  which  is  imitative  and  simple,  and 
action  which  is  still  imitative,  but  complex,  —  the  latter 
alone  being  persistent,  effortful,  acquisitive,  voluntary. 
These  poor  creatures  have  mental  images,  and  make 
responses  to  them,  but  they  are  unable,  in  Janet's  phrase, 
(V ejfectuer  la  synthese? 

Passing  now  to  what  I  have  designated  partial  aboulia, 
we  have  to  consider  the  decay  or  destruction  of  particular 
motor  functions,  asking  whether,  if  we  apply  the  law  that 
the  order  of  loss  is  the  inverse  of  that  of  development,  we 
find  evidence  for  our  theory  of  the  rise  of  volition.  This 
examination  can  best  be  made  in  connection  with  complex 
functions  or  acquisitions,  and  speech  and  handwriting  at 

1  The  expression  'mental  dumbness'  was  suggested  first  by  the  present 
writer  for  the  inabiUty  to  speak  intelligently,  as  opposed  to  the  mere  ability  to 
imitate  sounds.  See  the  article,  *  Internal  Speech  and  Song,'  F/iilos.  Review, 
II.,  1893,  p.  389.     See  also,  below,  Chap.  XIV.,  §  i. 

2  The  characteristics  of  the  idiot's  movements  are  given  by  Guicciardi, 
Zeitsch.  fur  Psychologic,  IV.,  p.  154,  as,  in  order,  progressive  inco-ordination 
of  voluntary  movement,  loss  of  voluntary  movement,  increased  imitation. 


1 


special  Evidence.  409 

once  suggest  themselves.  I  accordingly  have  to  cite  evi- 
dence from  aphasia  and  agraphia.  Other  functions  which 
do  not  involve  so  clearly  the  complex  co-ordinations  learned 
by  voluntary  effort  may  also  be  cited  in  their  place  as  we 
proceed. 

It  may  be  well  to  give,  at  the  outset,  the  general  result 
of  the  detailed  examination  of  cases  of  such  troubles.  The 
order  of  acquisition  of  the  elements  of  speech  and  hand- 
writing is  this :  first,  in  the  stage  of  suggestive  reaction 
before  the  rise  of  conscious  imitation,  we  find  hearing  of 
sounds  with  some  very  simple  associations,  also  suggestive 
adaptation  of  movements  of  the  tongue,  hands,  etc.,  under 
the  direct  stimulus  of  associations,  pleasures  and  pains, 
etc.  ;  second,  in  the  stage  of  simple  imitation,  we  find  full 
recognition  of  objects  and  musical  tunes,  some  slight 
power  of  song  in  individual  children,  imperfect  articula- 
tion, increasing  co-ordination  of  movements,  though  still 
without  effort  or  volition  ;  third,  in  the  epoch  of  persistent 
imitation,  we  find  full  understanding  of  speech,  the  rapid 
acquisition  of  co-ordinated  movements  in  speaking  and 
writing,  and  also  visual  sign  interpretation  which  leads  on 
to  the  ability  to  read. 

On  the  side  of  disease,  therefore,  we  would  expect,  if 
the  acquisition  proceeds  by  stages  so  well  marked,  that  at 
least  the  same  three  great  types  of  function  would  be 
reasonably  independent  in  their  loss.  That  is,  we  should 
find  that  the  highest  type  of  function,  revealed  in  volition 
and  conscious  synthesis,  would  in  some  cases  be  lost  alone, 
and  that  to  its  loss  might  then  be  added  that  of  the  func- 
tion which  corresponds  to  sensation  and  simple  imitative 
adaptation,  but  which  does  not  show  intelligence  and  con- 
scious selection.     Finally,  in  the  most  fundamental  derange- 


4IO  The  Origin  of  Volition. 

ment  of  all,  even  the  degree  of  acquisition  represented  by- 
direct  imitation  and  reflex  speech  should  be  impaired  along 
with  the  two  higher  kinds. 

Our  expectations  are  so  clearly  fulfilled  in  current  inter- 
pretations of  defects  in  the  active  life,  that  the  very 
nomenclature  of  the  subject  gives  us  words  for  these  very 
distinctions.  Loss  of  the  first  type  is  called,  as  we  have 
seen,  psychic  blindness,  deafness,  etc.,  according  as  one 
sense  or  another  is  affected,  issuing  in  associative  or 
higher  sensory  aphasia.  The  term  dyslogia  has  been  ap- 
plied to  this  state  by  Seglas.  It  has  equal  application  to 
various  functions,  but  applies  especially  to  speech.  The 
second  stage  has  had,  if  not  equally  general  recognition, 
equally  happy  characterization  by  the  same  author,  who 
calls  defects  of  speech  of  this  general  nature  dysphasia. 
It  is  aphasia  of  the  sensory  or  motor  type,  due  to  the  loss 
of  a  specific  kind  of  sensory  or  motor  memory  through 
a  lesion  in  a  specific  centre.  Finally,  the  greatest  defect 
of  speech  is  dyslalia^  or  aphasia  due  to  lesions  in  the  lower 
centres. 

We  may  now,  before  going  into  more  detail,  draw  up  a 
table  showing  these  functions,  and  the  corresponding 
defects  of  the  three  great  classes  described,  using  the 
terms  current  for  the  function  of  speech,  but  bearing  in 
mind  the  general  application  of  the  divisions  themselves 
to  complex  motor  acquisitions  in  general.     See  Table  X. 

The  main  point  in  discussion  —  the  origin  of  Volition  — 
is  isolated  in  the  question  as  to  the  distinction  between 
dyslogia  and  dysphasia.  The  question  is  this  :  Do  we 
find  that  whenever  the  mind  is  impaired  to  the  degree 
designated,  in  respect  of  special  acts,  by  the  phrase  am- 
nesia, —  the    loss    of    some    function    demanding    sponta- 


special  Evidence. 


411 


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412  The  Origin  of  Volition. 

neous  co-ordinated  memories,  and  action  in  view  of  such 
co-ordinated  memories,  —  that  voluntary  acquisitions  are 
then  impaired,  while  purely  sensori-motor  actions  remain  ? 
In  other  words,  do  these  kinds  of  aphasia  —  speaking  of 
speech  in  particular  —  show  a  functional  line  between  per- 
sistent effort  and  simple  imitation  ? 

In  support  of  the  truthfulness  of  the  exhibit  made  in 
the  table  —  as  far  as  pathology  goes  —  I  may  make  certain 
observations  :  — 

Among  the  numerous  schematic  diagrams  which  have 
been  proposed  to  illustrate  aphasia  in  its  different  forms, 
that  of  Lichtheim  has  had  most  recognition. ^  It  is  not 
my  purpose  to  add  to  these  constructions,  which  have  rep- 
resented, in  part  at  least,  the  individual  interpretations  of 
the  particular  writers.  The  *  motor  square '  which  has 
been  found  serviceable  in  the  preceding  sections,  presents 
a  modification  of  Lichtheim's  scheme  in  the  one  direction 
in  which  current  psychology  finds  some  of  its  most  impor- 
tant problems  ;  and  it  thus  enables  us  to  bring  the  prob- 
lems of  aphasia  into  connection  with  general  psychological 
theory.  Lichtheim's  diagram,  Fig.  XVII.  a.,  gives  no  means 
of  distinguishing  between  the  centre  of  muscular  sensa- 
tions and  memories,  the  kinaesthetic  centre,  on  one  side, 
and  the  true  motor  centre,  the  innervation  centre,  on  the 
other  side  ;  but  includes  both,  under  the  one  symbol  M. 
In  my  'motor  square'  diagram.  Fig.  XVII.  b.,  these  two 
possibly  distinct  areas,  and  perfectly  distinct  functions,  are 
distinguished,  thus  making  it  possible  to  represent,  dia- 
grammatically,  a  distinction  current  in  psychology.  The 
distinction  is  required  in  the  interjDretation  of  cases  of 
aphasia.     Lichtheim   himself  admits  this,  and   constructs 

1  Brain,  Part  XXVIII.,  January,  1S85,  p.  436  (his  Fig.  i). 


special  Evidence. 


413 


an  awkward  supplement  to  his  diagram  when  he  comes  to 
interpret  certain  individual  cases. ^  If  my  'motor  square' 
be  squeezed  together,  so  that  the  opposite  corners,  mc  and 
vip,  coincide,  it  then  becomes  identical  with  Lichtheim's. 
The  isolation  of  vip,  however,  is  required  by  all  the  evi- 
dence now  accumulated,  which  goes  to  show  that  move- 
ments may  be  stimulated  directly  from  the  sensory  centres 
{sg\  sight,  hearing,  etc.),  or  directly  from  the  higher  co- 


me 


m                          CL 

mi 

a.  Scheme  of  Lichtheim. 

FIG.   XVII. 

b.  Motor  Square 

ordinating  centre  {cc)  —  supposing  it  to  exist,  as  all  the 
diagrams,  interpreting  the  facts  functionally,  represent  — 
without  necessary  stimulation  of  the  kina^sthetic  cortical 
movement  centre  i^jtc).  This  class  of  cases,  now  very 
generally  accepted,  has  no  separate  recognition,  I  think, 
in  any  of  the  schemes  except  my  *  motor  square.' 

Interpreting  the  '  motor  square '  in  terms  of  the  three 
great  functional  classes  of  motor  acquisitions,  we  may  say 

1  Loc.  ciL,  pp.  437,  443,  451  (his  Figs.  2,  4,  5). 

2  My  use  of  this  diagram,  before  I  saw  Lichtheim's,  in  class-room  demon- 
stration of  the  '  motor '  problems  in  psychology,  has  proved  it  so  convenient 
that  I  have  ventured  to  print  it  in  my  text-books.  Most  of  the  diagrams  proposed 
by  others  are  intended  to  illustrate  the  different  sensory  areas  which  contribute 
to  speech  (Charcot's,  Kussmaul's  in  Storungen  der  Sprache,  p.  182,  etc.); 
these  centres  are  all  bunched  in  Lichtheim's  and  mine,  the  purpose  being  to 
illustrate  types  of  motor  disturbance,  rather  than  particular  local  lesions. 


414  '^^^  Origin  of  Volition. 

that  aboulia,  and  the  equivalent  dyslogia,  result  from  some 
disturbance  in  cc,  or  its  connections,  whereby  the  co-ordi- 
nating centre  (Lichtheim's  Begriffscentrimi,  B)  is  cut  off, 
either  (i),  from  the  motor  discharge  centre  mp,  for  the 
particular  function  in  question,  or  (2),  from  the  centres 
from  which  the  stimulus  or  material  of  co-ordination  comes. 
All  the  varieties  of  amnesia  fall  under  (2),  in  as  far  as  the 
particular  memory  pictures  whose  absence  constitutes  the 
amnesia  observed,  are  necessary  to  the  concentration  of 
attention  by  which  the  voluntary  performance  of  the  action 
in  question  is  brought  about.  That  is,  it  is  possible  that  a 
particular  case  of  inability  to  perform  an  act  of  speech  may 
be  due,  apart  from  injury  to  cc,  to  a  lesion  which  breaks 
any  of  the  three  connections  cc,  mp ;  cc,  sg,  mp ;  or  cc, 
mc,  mp.  The  other  case  (i)  includes  instances  in  which 
the  failure  to  speak  is  due  to  lack  of  ability  to  get  the 
attention  fixed  upon  anything  which  would  represent  the 
movement  itself  apart  from  both  kinaesthetic  impressions 
and  special  sense  memories.  Such  cases  would  involve  a 
doctrine  of  innervation  sensations  and  memories  due  to  the 
condition  of  the  motor  discharge  centre  itself.^ 

The  two  other  cases  of  possible  lesion  in  this  highest 
region,  involving  aboulia  only,  represent  respectively  sen- 
sory amnesic  aphasia  of  the  several  kinds  known  as  visual, 
auditory,  etc.,  and  motor  amnesic  aphasia.  It  is  evident 
that  a  break  in  the  line  cc,  sg  would  accomplish  both  of 
these ;  that  is,  the  patient  would  be  unable  to  speak  volun- 

1  So  Waller's  region  {Brain,  XIV.,  p.  179,  and  XV.,  pp.  380  ff.),  which  is 
called  by  him  the  '  locus '  of  subjective  as  well  as  objective  fatigue,  would,  if 
cut  off  from  its  connection  with  the  co-ordinating  centre,  produce  aphasia, 
even  when  the  kinaesthetic  sensation  series  were  all  intact.  This  possibility, 
whatever  we  may  think  of  its  probability,  it  is  impossible  to  represent  on 
Lichtheim's  or  any  other  of  the  earlier  diagrams. 


special  Evidence,  415 

tarily,  however  he  might  preserve  all  his  special  centres, 
both  sensory  and  motor.  This  is  the  case  where  a  patient 
is  unable  to  speak  or  write  spontaneously,  although  he  can 
repeat  or  write  words  which  he  hears  or  sees,  written  or 
printed  (using  the  line  mc,  mp).  It  is  possible,  however, 
since  the  symbol  sg  represents  the  various  sensory  seats 
taken  together,  that  a  function  like  speech  might  in  some 
cases  not  be  impaired  when  a  particular  connection  cc,  sg  is 
cut,  since  the  attention  might  be  stimulated  by  a  discharge 
from  an  alternative  sensory  seat.  This  gives  its  validity 
to  the  distinction  between  the  so-called  types  of  speech,  as 
auditory,  visual,  motor,  etc. 

It  is  evident,  therefore,  that  a  certain  very  important 
class  of  functions  would  be  left  to  a  man  of  such  partial 
aboulia.  First,  he  might  be  able  to  perform  a  voluntary 
function  when  his  attention  was  supplied  with  some  in- 
direct stimulus  :  so  the  cases  in  which  voluntary  movement 
is  possible  only  when  the  eyes  are  open.  Or,  second,  he 
might  be  able  to  perform  other  voluntary  co-ordinations 
in  which  the  particular  class  of  memories  now  cut  off  are 
not  essential  elements ;  and  third,  he  might  be  able  to  per- 
form, reflexly  or  by  suggestion,  imitation,  etc.,  functions 
which  he  could  not  perform  voluntarily. 

All  of  these  deductions  respecting  aboulic  patients  are 
securely  established  by  pathological  facts.  The  last  men- 
tioned is  the  critical  distinction,  and  some  cases  illustrat- 
ing it  may  be  cited,  from  a  great  number  available.  They 
are  selected  with  two  especial  points  in  view :  first,  as 
showing  the  fact  of  conscious  simple  imitation  in  patients 
to  whom  all  persistent  effortful  reactions  had  become  im- 
possible ;  and,  second,  as  showing  the  inability  of  such 
patients  to  learn  again  the  function  which  is  lost,  without 


41 6  The  Origin  of  Volitio7t. 

resorting  to  a  painstaking  repetition  by  imitation  of  a  new 
kind  of  motor  association.  By  this  means  such  a  patient 
may  train  his  attention  over  again  upon  a  new  class  of 
memory  images. 

1.  Case  of  Pick  already  cited. ^  This  man  was  able  to 
strike  a  match  only  when  he  saw  the  proper  movements 
of  another  (pp.  764  and  76Z).  He  echoed  words  he  heard, 
and  he  even  repeated  with  the  questioning  inflection  ques- 
tions addressed  to  himself  (pp.  568-569  and  771-773) ; 
but  he  had  lost  all  spontaneous  speech.  Pick  interprets  the 
case  (p.  774)  as  one  of  'transcortical  word-deafness'  de- 
scribed by  Lichtheim  and  Wernicke,  which  arises  from  a 
lesion  of  the  line  BM  in  Lichtheim's  diagram,  or  of  the 
line  cc,  sg  in  my  '  motor  square.'  It  is  a  case  of  verbal 
amnesic  aphasia,  or  dyslogia.  It  involves  aboulia,  but  not 
dysphasia. 

2.  Case  of  Pitres,^  showing  agraphia,  in  which  '  tracery 
imitation  '  remained.  This  case  also  shows  the  possible 
mutual  isolation  of  speech  and  writing,  inasmuch  as  there 
was  no  aphasia.  Here  we  have  a  lesion  of  the  tract  cc,  sg 
(Lichtheim's  BM)  for  writing  movements  only,  the  lesion 
not  extending  to  the  corresponding  tracts  for  speech 
movements. 

3.  A  different  complication  is  shown  in  another  case 
cited  by  Ross,^  in  which  deep-seated  aphasia  (dysphasia)  is 
associated  with  alexia,  without  agraphia.  This  patient's 
speech  movements  were  probably  dependent  upon  the 
visual  word  centre  for  stimulation,  while  his  writing  move- 


^  Arch,  fur  Psychiatric,  XXII.,  heft  3. 

2  Cited  by  Ross,  PVood's  Medical  Monographs,  Vol.   VI.,  No.   I,  1890,  p. 

152-153- 

^  Ibid.,  pp.  197-199. 


special  Evidence.  4 1 7 

ments  were  not  so  dependent ;  consequently  alexia  (lesion 
of  the  visual  word  centre)  carried  with  it  amnesic  aphasia, 
but  not  agraphia. 

4.  Case  cited  by  Lichtheim.^  It  shows  the  preserva- 
tion of  a  variety  of  simple  imitative  or  ideo-motor  sugges- 
tive reactions,  while  the  corresponding  voluntary  functions 
were  lost.  The  patient  could  copy  handwriting,  write  to 
dictation,  repeat  words  heard,  and  read  aloud,  but  he  could 
not  write  nor  speak  spontaneously.  It  is  accordingly  a 
case  of  amnesic  aphasia  and  agraphia,  involving  loss  of  the 
voluntary  functions  only.  This  case  is  a  very  fine  illustra- 
tion of  my  thesis,  inasmuch  as  it  shows  the  action  of  the 
principle  of  Habit,  whereby  activities  at  first  learned  by 
persistent  effort  have  become  ideo-motor,  so  that  it  is  only 
their  voluntary  performance^  and  tJie  ability  to  learn  more^ 
which  are  impaired. 

Again  there  are  cases  which  show  a  finer  application 
still  of  the  law  of  Habit,  in  connection  with  each  of  the 
functions  of  voluntary  movement.  It  is  impossible  to  say 
beforehand  just  how  much  or  how  little  of  what  is,  as  a 
whole,  an  action  learned  by  imitative  effort  remains  still 
under  voluntary  control  at  any  time.  A  great  part  of  any 
one  of  our  habitual  actions  is  regularly  under  subcortical  or 
ideo-motor  control,  except  for  inhibitions  or  unusual  exer- 
cises of  it. 

We  find  that  speech,  for  example,  is  subject  to  a  great 
many  finer  degrees  of  impairment.  Sentence-making  may 
be  impossible,  while  the  words  taken  alone  may  be  spoken. 
Words  again  may  be  impossible,  while  the  simple  syllabic 
sounds  may  be  quite  possible.  Certain  classes  of  words, 
as  nouns  and  names,  may  disappear  while  other  classes  of 

1  Brain,  VII.,  1891,  p.  437. 
2E 


41 8  The  Origin  of  Volition. 

words  remain.  And  finally,  all  that  the  patient  may  be 
capable  of  is  some  single  oft-repeated  sound.^  In  all  this 
we  see  reversed  the  child's  progress  from  simple  imitation 
of  sounds,  to  effortful  repetition,  then  to  the  co-ordination 
of  sounds  or  syllables  into  words,  then  to  imitations  of 
short  sentences  which  he  hears,  and  finally  to  spontaneous 
combinations  of  his  own  to  express  his  meaning. 

A  similar  series  of  facts  is  found  also  in  agraphia,  or 
derangements  of  writing  ;  stages  in  which  there  are,  in 
order,  certain  defects  becoming  more  and  more  grave. 
There  is  trembling  handwriting,  failure  to  write  sentences, 
when  certain  words  can  still  be  written  ;  failure  to  write 
words,  while  musical  notation,  or  single  letters,  or  both, 
may  still  be  written ;  failure  to  write  letters,  while  figures  ^ 
may  still  be  written ;  failure  to  write  anything  except  to 
dictation;^  and  finally,  failure  to  write  at  all  without  copies, 
although  copies  may  still  be  traced.  Here  is  retrogres- 
sion from  the  highest  co-ordination  of  hand  movements, 
down  to  the  tracery  imitation  already  described ;  *  the  final 
stage  being  that  in  which  meaningless  scrawls  show  the 
absence  of  all  central  co-ordination.^ 

So  in  the  case  of  alexia,  or  impairment  of  reading  ; 
a  function  which  may  be  destroyed  without  impairing 
either  speech  or  writing.^     It  may  extend  to  the  reading 

1  See  Kussmaul,  Storiingen  der  Sprache,  pp.  9  and  164,  and  for  illustrative 
cases,  Revue  Philos.^  Oct.  1892,  p.  157  ff.  Also  Bateman,  On  Aphasia,  p.  75. 
Ribot  traces  this  progress,  as  a  phenomenon  of  memory,  Maladies  de  la 
Mevioire,  pp.  132  ff.;   cf.  Brazier,  Revue  Philos.,  Oct.  1892,  p.  364. 

2  Case  of  Dejerine,  Mem.  Soc.  de  Biologie,  Feb.  27,  1892  ;  cf.  Brain, 
1893,  p.  318. 

^  Lichtheim's  case,  Brain,  VII.,  p.  447.  4  Above,  Chap.  V. 

6  See  Starr's  case,  Medical  Record  (N.  Y.),  XXXIV.,  1888,  p.  500. 

6  Alexia  without  agraphia  is  rare ;  but  see  the  remarkable  case  of  Dejerine 
cited  in  the  second  note  above.  Agraphia  came  on  subsequently  in  conse- 
quence of  a  second  lesion  found  at  the  autopsy. 


special  Evidaice.  419 

of  handwriting  only  (even  the  patient's  own  ^ ) ;  or  to  read- 
ing of  music  notation  only;^  or  to  all  printing  and  hand- 
writing except  numerical  figures;^  or  to  all  but  draw- 
ings and  outlines  of  objects  ;  or  to  all  signs  except  music 
notation  ;  or,  finally,  to  all  interpretation  of  visual  signs  ; 
in  which  case  only  simple  sensations  of  sight  remain, 
and  the  patient  reaches  the  condition  called  psychic 
blindness.^ 

Recent  observations  show  a  corresponding  analysis  by 
disease  of  the  faculty  of  musical  expression.  The  power 
of  playing  on  instruments,  or  singing  by  note,  may  be 
lost,  while  familiar  selections  may  still  be  executed  from 
memory  ;  and,  when  the  disease  has  developed  further,  an 
air  becomes  impossible  from  memory,  but  may  still  be  exe- 
cuted by  the  imitation  of  another's  performance.^  Oppen- 
heim  cites  the  case  of  a  patient  who  could  not  sing  until 
the  words  of  a  familiar  song  were  spoken  to  him,^  although 
he  could  not  repeat  the  words ;  and  Franckl  cites  the  case 
of  a  patient  with  right-sided  hemiplegia,  agraphia,  alexia, 
and  aphasia  to  the  extent  of  echolalia,  who  yet  sang  one 
song,  but  without  the  words.''  These  last  two  cases  ^  illus- 
trate purely  suggestive  or  automatic  singing.^ 

1  Oppenheim,  Charite  Annalen,  XVII. 

2  Ballet,  quoted  by  Wallaschek. 

8  See  Glashey's  case,  Arch.fiir  Psych.,  XVI.,  1885,  p.  661. 

*  Cf.  the  analysis  into  five  stages  of  defect  in  reading,  by  Weissenberg, 
Arch.fiir  Psychiatric,  XXII.,  1891,  p.  442. 

^  See  Brazier,  loc.  cit.,  and  Case  3  of  Oppenheim,  Charite  Annalen,  XIII., 
1888,  p.  354,  quoted  by  Wallaschek,  Zeitschrift  fiir  Psychologic,  Vol.  VI.,  p.  8. 

^  Loc.  cit.,  XIII.,  p.  358;   cf.  also  Wallaschek,  loc.  cit.,  p.  12. 

^  Franckl-Hochwart,  Z'.fw/j^r/!.  Zeiisch.fiir  Nerveuheilkiinde^  1 89 1, 1.,  p.  287. 

8  See  also  another  of  Oppcnheim's  (a  man  who  could  not  read,  but  yet 
sang  off  correctly  a  printed  musical  score),  loc.  cit.,  p.  364;  and  yet  another, 
of  a  boy  who  sang  a  song  in  his  eleventh  month,  before  he  learned  to  speak 
(Wallaschek,  loc.  cit.,  p.  13). 

®  See  my  own  case  above,  Chap.  VI.,  §  3  (*  Sense  Exaltation'''). 


420  The  Origin  of  Volition. 

The  connection  between  speech  and  music  which  has 
been  spoken  of  above,^  may  also  be  serviceable  in  another 
way.  Patients  have  been  reported  who  could  speak  only  by 
singing  the  words.  In  such  cases  they  may  be  able  thus  to 
understand  the  words,^  or  even  yet  not  to  understand  them.^ 
The  latter  illustrates  the  reflex  or  suggestive  movements  of 
speech,  which  may  be  stimulated  through  the  centre  of  the 
understanding  of  music,  whether  it  be  visual  or  auditory. 
Gowers  accounts  for  this  latter  case  by  the  observation 
that  the  text,  in  musical  execution,  is  simply  a  convenience, 
not  an  essential,  and  the  meaning  of  the  words  is,  in 
learning,  entirely  subordinated  to  the  correct  music. ^  It 
is  again  essential  to  remark  here,  —  in  order  to  keep 
our  argument  clearly  in  view, — that  there  may  be  aboulia 
for  musical  execution,  leaving  reflex  or  imitative  execution 
intact ;  and  that  in  such  cases  no  new  musical  acquisitions 
can  be  made.* 

V.  Still  another  class  of  facts  may  be  cited  as  affording 
evidence  in  favour  of  my  view  of  the  rise  of  volition ;  the 
facts  of  brain  development,   as  comparative   embryology 

1  Chap.  IV.,  §  2. 

2  Case  referred  to  by  Starr,  Psycholog.  Revietv^  I.,  1894,  p.  92. 
^  Diseases  of  the  Brain,  1885,  p.  122. 

*  The  final  loss  of  the  imitative  function  as  involved  in  gesture,  general  move- 
ment, etc.  (so-called  amif?tia  ;  see  Kussmaul,  loc.  cit.,  p.  159  ff.,  and  Ballet,  loc. 
cit.,  p.  75),  and  its  amnesic  phase  need  not  be  dwelt  upon.  Amimia  reduces  the 
patient  to  the  stage  of  pre-imitative  suggestion,  again  confirming  the  reverse 
parallel  between  order  of  acquisition  and  order  of  loss.  A  case  recently  re- 
ported by  Mills  in  Philada.  Hasp.  Reports,  1893,  brings  out  the  facts  clearly. 
A  patient,  having  right  hemiplegia  and  motor  aphasia,  without  word-deafness, 
lost  all  expression  by  vioveiiients  of  any  kind,  except  that  he  uttered  '  la-la ' 
over  and  over,  and  could  still  laugh  when  pleased.  The  expressive  move- 
ments which  he  retained  longest — apart  from  those  mentioned  —  were  the 
'  nod  '  and  *  shake  '  of  head  to  signify  '  yes  '  and  '  no.'  As  we  would  expect, 
facial  expression  usually  remains  intact,  even  in  cases  of  amimia  which  in- 
volves all  voluntary  pantomine,  gesture,  etc. 


special  Evidence.  421 

and  early  brain  anatomy  supply  them.  Two  very  general 
questions  arise  in  view  of  our  present  topic :  we  are 
interested  to  know,  first,  what  kind  of  motor  apparatus 
the  child  is  born  with  ;  and,  second,  in  what  order  he 
adds  to  his  motor  equipment  in  the  way  of  activities 
which  may  be  described  as  voluntary.  In  answer  to  the 
first  question,  we  may  say  without  hesitation  that  the 
child  begins  life  without  the  necessary  apparatus  for  any 
voluntary  action  whatever.  He  lacks  two  very  important, 
indeed,  essential  things :  associative  connections  between 
the  lower  central  organs  and  the  cortex,  with  all  traces  of 
medulated  nerve  fibre ;  and,  second,  his  cerebrum  has  not 
developed  the  different  local  centres  and  their  connections 
with  one  another.     So  far  there  is  no  dispute.^ 

In  regard  to  the  second  inquiry, — the  time  and  order 
of  development  of  complete  activities,  —  experimental  evi- 
dence is  largely  lacking  and  anatomical  evidence  is 
notoriously  uncertain.  Putting  the  anatomical  evidence, 
however,  with  that  of  comparative  physiology,  we  see 
ground  to  justify  us  in  the  position  that  volition  is  a 
matter  of  cortical  co-ordination,  occurring  possibly  about 
the  sixth  to  eighth  month,  after  simple  imitation  has 
become  common  and  varied.  It  should  be  borne  in  mind, 
however,  —  lest  this  seem  like  special  pleading,  in  view  of 
the  very  scanty  evidence  at  hand,  —  that  it  is  not  a  ques- 
tion here  of  what  is  the  true  hypothesis,  but  of  what  alter- 
natives may  be  true. 

The  main  facts  now  known  may  be  thrown  together 
very  briefly.  Soltmann^  found  that  young  dogs  did  not 
respond  to  stimulation  of  the  cortical  motor  centres  until 

1  Foster,  Preyer,  Bastian,  Soltmann,  Meyncrt. 

2  Jahrbtich  fiir  Kinderheitkuiide^  IX.,  1875,  PP-  ^^5  ^- 


42  2  The  Origin  of  Voliiion. 

nine  days  old,  i.e.,  until  two  days  after  the  eyes  were  open ; 
then  the  reaction  came  first  only  from  the  fore  paw.  The 
same  results  were  shown  by  looking  for  laming  in  the 
dog's  movements  after  extirpation  of  the  motor  centres. 
Further,  Soltmann,  in  considering  the  analogies  of  struct- 
ure, finds  voluntary  action  in  the  child  beginning  from  the 
middle  to  the  end  of  the  first  quarter-year,  and  that  it 
develops  first  for  the  arm,  then  hand,  and  last  for  the  leg 
(the  dog's  hind  paw  was  quite  lawless  —  regellos  —  in 
its  responses  to  stimulation  as  late  as  the  sixth  month). 
These  deductions  are  accepted  by  Vierordt.^  Further, 
Soltmann  finds  that  the  child  does  not  get  the  eyelid- 
touch  reflex,  which  is  a  cortical  reflex,  till  its  seventh  or 
eighth  week. 

Again,  authorities  have  shown  that  the  composition  of 
the   brain  is   not   favourable   to   cortical  action  until  the       f 
seventh  month.     The  nerve  sheath  is  absent  in  the  brain, 
the    quantity   of   water  is   very  large    as    compared  with       j 
the  later  brain  condition,^  the  necessary  fibres    have  not       ' 
developed  between  the  motor  cortex  and  the  striate  bodies 
(Vierordt),  and  certain  cells  then  undergo  changes  making 
them  comparable  to  the  voluntary  cells.^     Meynert^  has 
found  further  lack  of  preparation  in  the  nerve  courses  of 
voluntary  action  in  the  human  infant  of  four  months.     As 
to  the  difference  between  the  young  dog  and  the  human 
infant,    Ferrier   says,    in    discussing    Soltmann's    results: 
''  The    degree    of    development    and    control    over   move-      | 
ments  which  a  puppy  reaches  in  ten  days  or  a  fortnight, 

^  Vierordt's  Lehrbuch  der  Kinderkrankheiten,  Bd.  I.,  p.  420.  j 

2  Wiesbach,  Arch,  filr  Psych.,  II.,  III. 

3  Jastrowicz,  Parrot  {Arch,  de  Physiologic,  I.,  530  ff.),  Virchow. 

■*  Cited  by  Soltmann,  loc.  cit.  'mtB\ 


special  Evideiice.  423 

are  not  attained  by  the  human  infant  under  a  year  or 
more,"^  Further,  if  we  suppose  that  in  the  child,  as  in 
the  dog,  the  sight  function  is  the  first  to  develop  its  con- 
nections sufificiently  to  stimulate  to  voluntary  action,  we 
may  fall  back  upon  the  researches  of  Flechsig,  showing 
that  fibres  from  the  sight  centres  in  the  occipital  cortex  do 
not  begin  to  appear  in  the  child  until  the  second  or  third 
month.  Bernheim  quotes  Parrot  to  the  effect  that  the 
nervous  apparatus  is  not  entirely  ready  for  voluntary  action 
until  toward  the  end  of  the  ninth  month. 

However  uncertain  some  of  these  detailed  observations 
and  deductions  may  be,  it  is  nevertheless  easy  to  strike  fair 
limits  inside  of  which  we  may  say  conclusions  are  safe. 
Let  us  say,  therefore,  all  allowances  being  made  for  differ- 
ences between  man  and  dog,  and  for  errors  of  observation, 
that  voluntary  action  in  the  child  arises  and  develops  to 
perfection  gradually,  in  connection  with  single  functions 
separately,  between  about  the  fifth  and  ninth  months ; 
that  the  hand  becomes  first  capable  of  voluntary  use,  and 
that  its  use  occurs  first  in  connection  with  stimulation 
through  the  eye. 

Even  with  this  very  modest  outcome,  we  find  several 
interesting  side-lights  upon  our  results  already  arrived  at 
in  earlier  connections. 

1.  Volition  seems  to  come  about  the  time  of  advent  of 
suggestive  reactions  of  the  direct  imitative  kind. 

2.  It  arises  first  in  connection  with  the  sight-hand- 
movement  reaction,  a  result  which  we  have  already  had 
reason  to  anticipate.  This  seems  to  give  some  justifica- 
tion both  to  the  use  of  the  hand  in  connection  with  eye 
stimulations  of  colour,  etc.,  in  the  *  dynamogenic  method ' 

1  Functions  of  the  Brain,  2d  edition,  p.  364. 


424  The  Origin  of  Volition. 

of  study  which  we  have  been  pursuing,  and  also  to  the 
view  that  sight  (with  hearing)  go  ahead  of  the  other 
senses  in  stimulating  to  the  higher  co-ordinating  processes 
of  the  organism.  This  means,  in  my  jargon,  that  they  are 
the  avenues  of  greatest  progress  and  attainment  in  the 
'  circular '  form  of  reaction,  the  '  organic  imitation,'  by 
which  accommodation  comes  about.  So  it  is  no  accident 
that  they  are  the  most  imitative  of  the  senses,  when  imita- 
tion becomes  conscious. 

3.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  we  found  that  the  ten- 
dency to  use  the  right  hand  more  than  the  left  began 
(allowing  for  the  differences  in  children)  about  the  sixth 
to  the  eighth  month.  Comparing  this  with  the  result 
given  above,  that  the  arm  gets  ready  for  voluntary  use 
before  any  other  member,  and  about  the  seventh  month,  it 
seems  possible  to  surmise  that  one  motor  arm  centre  gets 
started  before  the  other,  and  more  vigorously,  in  its  prep- 
aration for  voluntary  action  ;  and  that  the  use  of  the  right 
hand  in  preference  to  the  left  is  evidence,  at  this  first 
stage,  of  just  this  preparation  going  on  in  the  left  hemi- 
sphere. As  the  speech  function  follows  this  up  pretty 
closely,  beginning  to  be  slightly  voluntary  in  the  shape  of 
verbal  imitations  about  the  eighth  or  ninth  months,  the 
idea  we  had  earlier,  that  voluntary  speech  proceeds  upon 
an  earlier  predominant  dextral  function,  gets,  at  any  rate, 
no  contradiction.^ 

1  It  is  interesting  to  find  that  both  Soltmann  found  with  young  dogs  and 
V.  Gudden  with  a  young  rabbit,  that  the  motor  centre  of  one  hemisphere  may 
control  both  the  right  and  the  left  limb  in  the  first  two  months  or  more. 
Soltmann  kept  a  young  dog  alive  a  number  of  weeks  after  its  left  fore  leg 
centre  had  been  removed,  and  succeeded  in  getting  movements  of  both  the 
fore  paws  by  stimulating  the  proper  centre  in  the  right  hemisphere.  Such 
double  contraction  from  stimulating  one  side  failed,  with  a  grown  dog,  as  it 
commonly  does  in  other  instances.     Soltmann,  loc.  cit.^  pp.  1 28-1 31. 


« 


special  Evidence.  425 

VI.  I  need  not  take  much  space  to  point  out,  as  a 
final  piece  of  evidence,  that  the  hypnotic  condition  shows 
a  Kne  drawn,  in  a  most  unmistakable  way,  just  between 
imitation  which  is  suggestion  under  the  reign  of  habit, 
and  imitation  which  involves  accommodation  and  volition. 
The  theory  of  hypnotism  now  most  widely  current,  under 
the  name  of  the  '  suggestive  theory,'  amounts  to  a  direct 
recognition  of  the  fact  that  the  somnambule  is  an  abnor- 
mally good  imitator.  Spontaneity,  synthesis,  self-direc- 
tion, these  are  gone ;  but  these  are  volition.  The 
somnambule  never  learns  anything  new.  He  is  always 
satisfied  with  what  he  imitates.  His  critical  attitudes,  his 
criteria  of  belief,  are  all  taken  from  him.  The  careful 
examination  of  the  facts  of  hypnosis,  with  the  view  of 
volition  now  advanced,  in  mind,  will  convince  any  one,  I 
think,  that  the  line  of  division  between  suggestion  and 
volition  is  where  I  have  placed  it. 

But  the  limits  of  the  somnambule's  suggestibility  show 
the  way  out  of  his  dilemma  very  plainly ;  the  way  nature 
has  actually  taken  in  the  development  of  the  child  and 
in  the  series  of  animal  forms.  Whenever  the  suggested 
course  comes  into  hard  collision  with  the  root-habits, 
sentiments,  realities,  of  his  nature,  —  his  modesty,  his 
veracity,  his  self-interests,  —  then  he  gets  aroused  to  a 
kind  of  hesitation.  He  delays,  avoids,  perhaps  refuses 
to  act  upon  the  suggestion.  This  reproduces  exactly  the 
condition  in  the  child's  consciousness  which  I  have  called 
*  deliberative  suggestion.'  ^  The  child  has  to  reconcile 
seeming  irrcconcilablcs,  to  violate  his  nature  sometimes. 
And  it  is  just  in  the  stress  of  such  issues  among  the 
suggestive   influences   that  move    him,   that  he  gets   the 

1  Above,  Cliap.  VI.,  §  3. 


426  The  Origin  of  Volition, 

higher  form  of  conscious  pluraUty  of  motives  which  his 
volition  goes  out  to  unite  in  one. 


§  5.     Variations  in  the  Rise  of  Volition,  dne  to  Phylogenesis. 

It  is  now  time  to  ask  whether  the  requisites  to  volition 
in  the  child  may  arise  in  another  way  than  by  the  imitation 
of  external  movements,  sounds,  etc. 

We  find  present,  indeed,  in  the  child  certain  hereditary 
tendencies  which  have  arisen  in  the  process  of  develop- 
ment —  tendencies  to  act  in  certain  ways,  to  pursue  certain 
classes  of  objects,  to  be  satisfied  with  certain  gratifications, 
and  to  urge  himself  toward  them.  The  case  of  volition 
is  not  narrowed  down,  as  would  seem  to  be  the  case  in  the 
typical  instance  figured  above,^  which  seems  in  effect  to 
make  the  child  ready  for  all  suggestions  which  come,  and 
equally  ready  for  all.  On  the  contrary,  he  has  appetites, 
instincts,  impulses ;  and  it  would  not  be  surprising  if  we 
should  find  that  these  may  precipitate  him  before  the  time 
into  a  certain  unready  choice  or  a  certain  conflict  of 
choices. 

Moreover,  the  principle  of  'organic  imitation '  has  shown 
us  that  the  rise  of  memory  and  imagination  is  the  direct 
outcome  of  the  need  which  confronts  the  organism  of 
meeting  its  stimulations  half-way :  the  organism  comes  to 
reinstate  within  consciousness,  on  occasion,  through  the 
development  of  its  central  cortical  processes,  certain  ele- 
ments which  we  call  memories,  pictures,  thoughts,  without 
waiting  for  the  stimulations  outside.  If  it  be  true  that 
memories  and  imaginations  differ  from  perceptions  only  in 
the  fact   that  they  are  'away'  from  external  nature  and 

1  Fig.  XIV.,  p.  377. 


I 


Variations  in  tJic  Rise  of  Volition.         427 

not  dependent  upon  its  present  objects,  then  why  may  not 
all  the  motor  consequences  which  were  at  first  associated 
with  the  objects  follow  from  the  images  simply  ? 

If  we  put  these  two  things  together,  namely,  organized 
habits  of  action  in  particular  ways,  and  the  motor  force  of 
memories  as  prompting,  by  their  dynamogenic  influence,  to 
the  repetition  of  the  reactions  with  which  they  themselves 
are  joined  —  then  we  have  the  possibility  of  volition  with- 
out overt  imitation  of  external  events,  and  possibly  earlier 
than  the  time  of  the  first  such  imitations. 

In  certain  instances  clearly  present  in  children,  the  facts 
are  simple,  and  show  three  cases :  either,  first,  the  child 
simply  remembers  something  and  aims  to  imitate  it ;  or, 
second,  the  synthesis  or  co-ordination  demanded  for  volition 
is  really  present,  as  our  scheme  in  Fig.  XIV.  demands,  but 
one  of  the  motor  tendencies  involved  is  a  special  native 
tendency.  Its  stimulus  is  organic.  And  when,  therefore,  a 
new  stimulus  comes  to  excite  a  movement  in  conflict  with 
the  one  prescribed  by  nature,  then  comes  all  the  com- 
plexity of  volition.  A  subtle  inner  controversy  arises  and 
the  child  has  to  settle  it,  quite  subconsciously  perhaps,  by 
a  choice  which  is  voluntary.  Or  third,  both,  all,  the  ten- 
dencies may  be  native,  but  one  of  them  modified  by 
experience,  reflection,  etc.,  in  a  partial  conflict  with  oth- 
ers, so  that  effort  arises  in  the  solution  of  the  case  for 
action. 

The  first  case  may  be  illustrated  by  any  volition  aimed  at 
a  memory,  and  bringing  out  the  movement  which  reinstates 
the  sensations  which  the  memory  stands  for.  My  child 
persistently  reaching  for  a  colour  and  then  moving  nearer 
to  get  it,  illustrates  this  case ;  or  H.  dragging  a  table-cloth 
in  her  seventh  month  to  bring  my  bunch  of  keys  within 


428  The  Origin  of  Volition. 

reach.  She  remembers  the  movements  necessary  and 
makes  them  voluntarily  for  an  end  —  movements  she  had 
before  found  out  by  accident,  or  had  seen  some  one  else 
make.  She  strives  to  reproduce  the  sensations  of  move- 
ment and  with  them  the  touch  of  the  keys  by  just  the  cir- 
cular process  of  imitation,  except  that  it  starts  in  the 
memory  centre  instead  of  in  eye  or  ear. 

The  second  case  has  interesting  illustrations  too :  a 
conflict  brought  about  between  a  native  impelling  instinct 
on  one  hand,  and  a  suggested  course  on  the  other.  Many 
direct  modifications  of  instinct  arise  in  this  way,  the  inhi- 
bition of  sobbing  and  crying,  the  self-denial  of  not  reaching 
for  attractive  things,  all  responses,  to  parent  or  companion, 
which  conflict  with  spontaneous  tendency,  and  then  con- 
sciously master  it.  These  are  voluntary,  in  the  transition 
sense,  just  in  as  far  as  there  is  motor  duality,  or  contrast, 
resolved  into  a  motor  unity,  which  effects  a  repetition  of 
the  one  reaction  or  the  other. 

And  still  more  deep-going  is  the  third  class  of  these 
so-called,  in  our  developmental  phraseology,  '  phylogenetic 
imitations,'  which  show  the  clash  of  nature  against  itself. 
We  have  seen  the  lower  form  of  it  in  *  deliberative  sugges- 
tion';i  suggestion  locking  horns  with  suggestion,  and  then 
—  the  outcome,  to  tell  us  which  is  victorious.  A  corre- 
sponding state  of  things  occurs  on  a  higher  scale,  at  the 
cortical  level,  when  we  feel  so  strongly  two  ideal  courses, 
and  consent  to  one  of  them,  by  seeming  to  ourselves  not 
to  choose  it  at  all.  It  simply  chooses  itself,  and  we  stand 
and  wonder.  So  the  child  often  acts  voluntarily  when  it 
is  practically  blind  to  pros  and  cons,  when  the  whole 
complex  condition  is  made  up  of    elements  so  character- 

1  Above,  Chap.  VI.,  §  3. 


f 


Variations  in  the  Rise  of  Volition.         429 

istic  and  strenuous  for  utterance,  that  allowance  or  recog- 
nition is  all  he  has  to  do.  The  child's  early  moral 
decisions  are  of  this  kind,  I  think.  The  ought,  the  right, 
simply  represent  a  growing  habit,  his  nature  coming  to 
feel  what  it  ought  to  be  by  what  it  is  getting  to  be,  in 
the  midst  of  crying  imperative  appetites  and  sugges- 
tions. He  acts  voluntarily  for  the  right,  let  us  say ;  but 
who  can  say  that  his  choice  is  in  any  intimate  sense 
his  own  } 

It  is  interesting  to  note,  further,  under  this  head,  an 
instance  of  what  is  to  be  spoken  of  again  as  the  'inter- 
action of  habit  and  accommodation.*  We  find  volition 
brought  out  on  occasion  of  imitation,  a  higher  kind  of 
imitation  called  '  persistent,'  in  which  the  child  does  not 
rest  content  with  the  degree  of  success  his  old  reactions 
provide,  but  aims  '  to  try  again  '  for  better  things.  Now 
the  imitative  instinct  itself  is  thus,  in  this  transition, 
brought  to  the  bar,  and  violated  by  its  own  passage  into 
volition.  In  volition,  the  agency  of  the  actor  comes  to 
instruct  him.  He  learns  his  power  to  resist  and  to  con- 
quer, as  well  as  his  weakness  and  subjection  to  a  copy. 
And  the  child  comes,  just  in  this  conflict  between  imita- 
tion, an  instinct,  and  suggestion,  an  innovation,  to  break 
through  and  make  himself  an  inventor,  and  a  free  agent. 
In  fact,  we  have  found  a  type  of  action  realized  in  the 
phrase  'contrary'  or  'wayward'  suggestion,  in  which  just 
this  revolt  becomes  a  way  of  action.  The  boy  woiit  imi- 
tate. This  simply  means  that  he  won't  imitate  what  other 
people  ask  him  to,  but  prefers  to  imitate  what  he  asks  him- 
self to.  He  imitates  just  the  same,  of  course.  But  the 
difference  is  world  wide.  A  '  contrary  '  boy  has  learned 
the  lesson  of  volition,  has  passed  from  suggestion  to  con- 


430  The  Origin  of  Volition. 

duct,  has  mounted  from  the  second  to  the  third  level,  and 
is  available  for  genius-material.^ 

I  have  said  enough  now  to  show  that  the  rise  of  volition 
is  but  another  illustration  of  the  one  law  of  motor  develop- 
ment. It  is  the  form  which  the  process  of  accommodation 
takes  on  when  the  central  processes  become  complex. 

•^  The  great  question  of  invention  vs.  imitation  —  how  can  any  one  be 
original  if  even  volition  and  thought  be  imitative  functions  ?  —  this  comes  up 
in  my  later  volume. 


f 


CHAPTER   XIV. 

The  Mechanism  of  Revival  :    Internal  Speech 
AND  Song. 

The  facts  of  memory  and  imagination  now  broadly  dis- 
cussed, are  capable  of  closer  description,  when  we  come 
to  the  analysis  of  consciousness  itself.  Each  function 
which  has  its  external  habit-aspect  in  the  action  of  the 
person,  has  also  its  internal  habit-aspect  in  the  movements 
among  the  elements  of  contact  in  the  mind,  which  go  to 
make  up  our  *  stream  of  thought.'  A  *  cross-section  '  of 
the  stream  at  any  moment  will  contain  the  elements  in 
consciousness  which  stand  for  the  activities  going  on,  or 
tending  to  go  on,  in  the  bodily  mechanism.  And  each 
such  element  must  have  its  reason  for  being  in  the  laws  of 
assimilation,  association,  and  thought,  already  briefly  put 
in  evidence. 

I  shall  attempt  to  show  this  in  more  detail  by  analyzing 
two  so-called  'expressive' functions,  both  of  which  are  most 
interesting  in  themselves,  and  both  of  which  have  had 
great  light  thrown  upon  them  in  later  years  :  speech  and 
song.  The  aim  shall  be,  not  to  give  detailed  descriptions 
of  the  execution  of  speech  and  music,  but  to  show  what  is 
actually  in  consciousness  at  the  time  of  any  such  execution, 
and  how  just  this  came  to  be  in  consciousness. 

431 


432  The  Mechanism  of  Revival. 

§  I.    Internal  Speech. 

An  important  advance  has  been  made  in  late  years  in 
the  purely  psychological  doctrine  of  memory  and  imagina- 
tion. The  old  psychology  held  that  all  individuals  were 
alike  as  regards  the  brain  centres  for  the  memory  of  par- 
ticular things  and  for  the  performance  of  particular  actions. 
It  has  been  shown,  however,  by  pathological  cases  and  by 
analysis  as  well,  that  we  are  not  alike.  Several  distinct 
so-called  'types'  have  been  discovered  —  persons  who  de- 
pend mainly  on  one  sense  for  their  memories,  and  on  the 
memories  of  this  sense  mainly  for  the  necessary  release  of 
voluntary  energy  into  the  muscular  combinations  used  in 
performing  particular  actions.  The  analysis  of  the  speech 
function  has  been  so  brilliant,  that  I  may  explain  it  more  in 
detail,  as  illustrating  the  general  principle  of  'types,'  upon 
which,  as  I  think,  the  true  theory  of  the  rise  and  develop- 
ment of  attention  must  be  based. 

The  doctrine  of  brain  function  in  speech  is  now  pretty 
clear  —  thanks  to  the  teaching,  principally,  of  pathological 
cases.  Normal  speech  is  a  function  which  probably  in- 
volves several  so-called  '  brain  centres,'  all  in  dynamic  con- 
nection with  one  another.  Given  a  man  with  the  physical 
apparatus  of  the  act  of  speaking  intact  —  vocal  organs, 
nerve  connections,  and  brain  seat  of  discharge  (Broca's 
gyre)  — and  ask  why  such  a  man  speaks,  the  answer  may 
take  several  forms.  He  may  name  a  word  sign  which  he 
has  seen,  or  repeat  a  word  sound  which  he  has  heard,  or  tell 
the  words  he  has  wi'itten,  or  finally,  he  may  speak  a  word 
simply  from  the  habit  of  speaking  it  —  from  the  tendency 
of  his  speech  apparatus  to  operate  as  it  has  operated 
before.     Now  we  ordinarily  generalize  this  diversity  in  the 


Internal  Speech.  433 

case  in  which  the  man  '  thinks  '  the  word  merely,  without 
speaking  it,  by  saying  that  the  word  is  '  in  his  mind,' 
internal,  i)iteyic7ir ;  but  the  question  is  :  What  is  in  his 
mind  ?  —  the  printed  word  (visual  image),  the  spoken  word 
(auditory),  the  written  word  (hand-motor),  the  articulate 
word  (speech-motor)  —  is  it  all  of  these?  Is  it  any  of 
them  ? 

If  we  agree  to  call  the  motor  centre  for  speech  {inp  of 
Fig.  XVII.  b,  p.  413)  the  'intrinsic  '  seat  of  stimulation  to 
the  organs  of  speech,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  to  call  the 
other  centres  pointed  out  '  extrinsic,'  the  question  now 
current  runs  :  Are  these  extrinsic  centres  capable,  each  for 
itself,  of  arousing  the  speech  centre  ;  or  does  one  of  them, 
the  centre  for  sensations  and  memories  of  actual  move- 
ment, the  '  kinaesthetic '  word  centre  (;;/<:,  of  the  same 
figure),  always  stand  between  the  motor  seat  and  the  other 
sensory  centres  .? 

Or,  put  psychologically,  do  we,  when  we  remember 
words  and  speak  them,  always  recall  them  in  terms  of  the 
sensations  of  movement  involved  in  speaking  or  writing 
them ;  or  is  it  possible  to  speak  simply  from  remembering 
the  visual  form  of  the  word,  or  its  sound  t  Is  the  kinaes- 
thetic centre,  with  the  memories  of  movement  to  which 
its  processes  correspond,  intrinsic  or  extrinsic } 

The  view  that  verbal  memories  are  always  motor,  or 
kinaesthetic,  is  associated  with  the  name  of  Strieker.^ 
Recent  results  have  refuted  Strieker.  A  variety  of  facts 
have  been  adduced  to  show  that  the  function  of  speech  is 
not  dependent  in  all  cases  upon  the  possibility  of  reinstating 

1  Strieker,  Ueber  die  Bewegiingsvorstelliingen,  Ueber  die  Association  der 
Vorsiellungen,  Ueber  die  Sprachvorstellungen,  Langage  et  Ahisiqiie.  See  also 
(j.  E.  Miiller,  Griindlegttiig  der  Psychophysik. 

2  F 


434  ^^^^  Mechanism  of  Revival, 

motor  experiences;  although  in  some  cases  it  is,  for  patients 
are  reported  who  could  not  speak  unless  they  first  traced 
the  words  with  hand  or  pen.^  Many  of  these  facts  are 
already  common  property  ;  but  a  few  of  the  latest  points 
on  this  side  of  the  discussion  are  these:  (i)  Cases  are 
cited  of  verbal  hallucination,  in  which  the  patient  hears 
two  or  more  voices,  one  of  which  he  takes  to  be  his 
own,  the  other  that  of  some  one  else  ;  only  the  former  can 
be  accounted  for  as  due  to  the  incipient  stimulation  of  his 
own  speech  centres,  the  other  is  probably  auditory.^  This 
interpretation  is  supported  by  the  interesting  fact,  estab- 
lished by  Pierre  Janet,  that  some  patients  can  themselves 
speak  during  their  verbal  hallucinations,  while  others  can- 
not. Again,  only  of  the  latter  class  must  we  hold  that 
the  motor  memories  are  necessary  to  speech.^  Indeed, 
there  is  a  characteristic  difference  between  the  two  classes, 
—  a  difference  first  pointed  out,  it  seems,  by  Baillarger  — 
i.e.^  with  those  patients  who  are  able  to  speak  without 
interrupting  the  voice  which  they  hear,  we  have  a  halluci- 
nation of  objective  speech  :  they  hear  what  they  think  is  a 
real  voice  outside  them.  While  the  other  class  have  a 
hallucination  of  internal  speech.  They  declare  that  there 
is  some  one  inside  them,  speaking  to  them.  Seglas  holds, 
with  evident  truth,  that  these  latter  hallucinations  are 
*psycho-motor '  *  in  their  seat,  while  the  'objective'  kind 

1  See  Sommer's  report  on  the  so-called  Grashey  case  —  a  patient  named 
Voit  —  in  Zeitsch.  fiir  Psychologie,  II.,  heft  3,  p.  158,  and  the  citations  of 
Pick,  same  journal,  III.,  heft  I,  p.  50. 

2  See  case  of  Charcot  quoted  by  Ballet,  Le  langage  interietir,  p.  64,  also 
cases  in  Seglas,  Les  troubles  du  langage  chez  les  alienes,  p.  1 26. 

3  Cf.  Revue  Philosophique,  November,  1892,  p.  520,  and  Seglas,  loc.  cit.^ 
p.  117  and  p.  145.  A  case  is  reported  of  a  patient  who  could  stop  his  internal 
voice  by  holding  his  breath  (^Annates  Psychol.,  January,  1893,  p.  103). 

*  Seglas,  loc.  cit.,  p.   147;    Janet,  loc.  ciL,  who    advocates    the   expression 


Internal  Speech.  435 

are  auditory.  (2)  There  are  cases  of  motor  aphasia  due 
to  impairment  of  hearing,  the  motor  centres  being  intact, 
i.e.,  cases  of  auditory  verbal  amnesic  aphasia.^  (3)  We 
recognize  and  understand  words  which  we  are  unable  to 
pronounce,  and  which  we  have  never  written  ;  this  recog- 
nition must  be  by  aid  of  visual  or  auditory  images.  The 
part  played  by  the  visual  and  motor  memories  respectively, 
in  my  own  case,  is  seen  in  the  fact  that  when  I  wish  to 
speak  in  any  language  but  English,  the  German  words 
come  first  into  my  mind  ;  but  when  I  sit  down  to  write  in 
a  foreign  language,  French  words  invariably  present  them- 
selves. This  means  that  my  German  is  speech-motor  and 
auditory,  having  been  learned  conversationally  in  Germany, 
while  the  French,  which  was  acquired  in  school  by  reading 
and  exercise-writing,  is  visual  and  hand-motor.^  It  is 
interesting  also  to  note  the  joyous  recognition  which  young 
children  show,  when  they  speak  a  new  vowel  or  consonant 
sound  correctly.  The  memory  of  the  correct  sound  can- 
not, in  this  case  evidently,  be  from  the  motor  centres.^ 
(4)  There  is  evidence  of  direct  functional  connection  be- 

*  kinaesthetic  verbal '  instead  of  *  psycho-motor,'  as  applying  to  this  hallu- 
cination of  internal  speech. 

1  See  cases  collected  by  Ballet,  loc.  cit.,  pp.  91-92;  also  Bastian's  case, 
Brain  as  Organ  of  Mind,  p.  642;  cf.  also  Paulhan,  Revue  Philosophique, 
XXL.  pp.  37  ff. 

"  A  similar  case,  apart  from  details,  is  reported  by  Ballet,  loc.  cit.,  p.  62. 

^  At  the  risk  of  too  much  personality  (of  which,  however,  the  literature  of 
this  topic  is  necessarily  full),  I  may  quote  the  following  about  my  two-year-old 
child  H.,  written  in  a  letter  by  her  aunt,  who  was  far  from  intending  it  as  a 
psychological  observation  or  for  publication  :  "  She  rejoices  greatly  when  she 
succeeds  in  sounding  a  new  letter.  The  other  day  she  achieved  /,  and  went 
about  telling  everybody,  *  Baby  can  say  sleep  and  slipper.'  This  morning  I 
am  informed  that  she  can  say  'save'  and  'give  '  (letter  v).  She  notices  at 
once  herself,  when  she  can  pronounce  the  word  as  the  rest  of  us  do  —  no  one 
tells  her." 


43^  The  Mechanism  of  Revival. 

tvveen  the  visual  and  auditory  seats  and  the  centre  of 
motor  discharge.  Here  I  may  best  give  the  words  of 
Janet,  who  writes  in  view  of  the  pathological  evidence  : 
"This  hypothesis  is  confirmed  by  investigations  on  anaes- 
thetic hysterics.  In  my  opinion,  it  is  impossible  to  explain 
the  fact  that  these  persons  preserve  their  power  of  move- 
ment intact,  in  spite  of  the  absolute  loss  of  kinaesthetic 
sensations  and  images,  unless  we  admit  that  movement 
may  be  directly  stimulated  by  visual  and  auditory  pictures. 
There  are  individuals  with  whom  the  auditory  image  of 
a  word  suffices  for  its  pronunciation."  ^  (5)  The  law  of 
'dynamogenesis,'  in  accordance  with  which  every  sensory 
stimulation  tends  to  bring  about  a  motor  discharge,  indi- 
cates such  a  direct  connection  in  cases  of  closely  associated 
function.  Fere  demonstrates  that  speaking  makes  the 
hand-grasp  stronger,  that  seeing  colours  and  hearing  sounds 
influence  the  motor  centres ;  so  it  is  altogether  probable 
that  stimulations  of  sight  and  hearing  react  directly  to 
stimulate  the  motor  speech  centres.^  (6)  Cases  may  be 
cited  of  direct  antagonism  between  memories  of  words 
and  the  sensations  produced  by  the  speech  movements 
which  they  stimulate.  The  pathological  state  called  para- 
phasia^ is  duplicated  sometimes  temporarily  in  cases  of 
severe  head-ache;  one  intends  to  mention  one  object 
(chair)  and  really  speaks  another  (spoon),  without  detecting 

1  Pierre  Janet,  Automatisme  Psychologique,  p.  60.  The  common  cases  of 
patients  who  can  copy,  when  they  cannot  initiate  writing  and  speech,  are  in 
evidence. 

■■2  Fere  cites  his  results  in  support  of  Strieker's  contention;  see  his  Sensa- 
tion et  Alouvetnent.  He  fails,  however,  to  distinguish  between  the  direct 
motor  effect  of  a  sensation,  and  the  round-about  motor  effect  —  i.e.,  through 
the  kinaesthetic  centre,  or  via  the  motor  correlations  which  the  attention  re- 
quires—  which  latter  is  required  by  Strieker's  view. 

2  Cf.  Bastian's  cases  of  *  incoordinate  amnesia,'  Brain  as  Organ  of  Mind, 
pp.  634-638. 


Internal  Speech.  437 

the  mistake.  I  have  myself  had  this  experience ;  being 
quite  unable  to  name  correctly  an  object  seen,  until  some 
one  else  has  spoken  the  word  with  emphasis  —  yet  all  the 
while  allowing  my  own  incorrect  word  to  pass,  and 
feeling  astonishment  that  others  have  not  understood  my 
meaning.  Similar  are  those  cases  in  which  patients  take 
their  own  words  for  those  of  some  one  else,  declaring, 
when  questioned,  that  they  themselves  did  not  speak 
them.^  Reflection  leads  us  to  the  view  that  in  these 
cases  there  is  a  direct  flow  from  the  auditory  or  visual 
centre  to  the  motor  speech  centre,  the  kinaesthetic  speech 
centre  being,  perhaps,  temporarily  inhibited.  The  same 
kind  of  antagonism  is  also  seen,  from  the  other  side,  when 
there  is  '  exaltation '  of  the  kinaesthetic  centre,  or  what  is 
called  uncontrollable  Verbal  impulse.'  The  patient  speaks 
certain  words  or  phrases  in  spite  of  himself — against  his 
utmost  effort  to  speak  something  else.^ 

This  conception  of  the  case  —  not  to  dwell  upon  other 
points  of  evidence^  —  seems  to  harmonize  well  with  the 

1  See  Seglas'  very  interesting  cases,  loc.  cit.,  pp.  150  f. 

2  See  Seglas  on  *  hysterical  mutism,'  loc.  ciL,  pp.  97  f.  In  dreams  this  is 
probably  the  case  :  the  kinesthetic  centres  are  no  longer  inhibited,  and  we 
talk  meaningless  sounds,  which  in  our  dream  consciousness  are  interpreted  as 
rational  discourse.  In  view  of  all  such  cases  of  antagonism,  I  suggested  in  an 
earlier  statement  of  the  main  considerations  on  this  point  {Philos.  Reviezv^  II., 
1893,  P-  389)5  that  a  distinction  was  legitimate  between  psychic  and  cortical 
dumbness,  corresponding  to  the  current  distinction  on  the  sensory  side.  Just 
as  there  is  a  distinction  between  being  unable  to  hear  words  (cortical  deafness), 
and  being  unable  to  understand  the  meanitigs  of  words  we  hear  (psychic  deaf- 
ness), so  there  is  a  distinction,  shown  pathologically,  between  being  unable  to 
speak  words,  and  being  unable  to  speak  the  words  we  mean.  Put  in  different 
terminology,  the  former  case  would  be  due  to  a  lesion  of  the  motor  elements 
at  the  '  second  level,'  and  the  latter  case  to  a  lesion  of  the  motor  connections 
between  the  second  and  the  cortical  or  '  third  level.'  Compare  the  allusions 
made  to  these  differences  above.  Chap.  XIII.,  §  3,  p.  408. 

^  For  instance,  cf.  Stumpf,  Tonpsychologie,  I.,  pp.  160  ff.  Further  evidence 
accrues,  also,  from  the  consideration  of  tune  memories,  which  seem    to   be 


438  The  Mrxhanism  of  Revival. 

doctrine  of  nervous  function  now  becoming  more  and  more 
current.  According  to  this  doctrine,  the  brain  is  a  series 
of  centres  of  relatively  stable  dynamic  tension  ;  the  various 
associative  connections  among  these  centres  are  paths  of 
less  and  morcy  rather  than  of  least  and  most,  resistance ; 
that  the  range  of  alternative  adjustments  is  excessively 
wide;  and,  consequently,  that  any  individual  has  his  'per- 
sonal equation '  in  all  functions  as  complex  as  that  of 
speech.  One  man  is  a  '  motor,'  another  a  '  visual,'  a  third 
an  *  auditive,'  according  as  one  or  another  of  the  extrinsic 
sources  of  stimulation  suffices  to  release  the  necessary 
energy  into  his  motor  speech  centre.  No  one  doubts 
Strieker,  therefore,  when  he  says  that  he  remembers  words 
only  by  means  of  sensations  of  incipient  movement ;  but 
for  the  same  reason  we  cannot  dispute  the  claim  of  Stumpf, 
and  Wernicke,  and  Kussmaul,  and  Lichtheim,  that  audi- 
tory and  visual  images  may,  in  other  cases,  play  an  equally 
leading  role. 

§  2.    Internal  Song:   Hoiv  do   We  think  of  Times? 

The  question  of  'internal  song'  is  a  new  one.  What 
do  we  mean  when  we  say  that  a  '  tune  is  running  in  our 
head ' }  What  sort  of  images  are  really  in  consciousness 
then } 

The  factors  involved  are  evidently  less  complex  than 
those  already  shown  to  be  involved  in  speech  memory,  in 
the  discussion  in  the  preceding  paragraph,^  at  the  same 
time  that  the  entire  phenomenon  is  more  obscure.     Evi- 

independent,  in  many  adults,  and  generally  in  children,  of  the  singing  or 
playing  of  the  tunes.  Cf.  above,  Chap.  VI.,  §  5,  and  the  next  section  of  this 
chapter. 

1  See  also  Chap.  XV.,  §  3. 


Internal  Song.  439 

dence  goes  to  show  that  the  internal  tune  is  almost  entirely 
auditory  :  that  is,  that  the  auditory  centre  is  intrinsic  to 
musical  reproduction. 

An  adequate  discussion  of  the  nature  of  tune  reproduc- 
tion should  provide  a  theory  of  tune  perception  which 
takes  account  of  three  factors  —  pitch,  time  or  rhythm, 
timbre  —  and  possibly  of  a  fourth  character,  ordinarily 
designated  by  the  phrase  '  musical  expression '  or,  more 
properly,  emotional  tone.^ 

There  are  certain  interesting  points  of  relationship 
between  the  process  of  internal  speech  and  that  of  '  inter- 
nal' or  remembered  music.  For  example,  many  persons 
find  internal  tunes  generally  fuller,  more  real,  and  some- 
times only  tunes  at  all  when  vocal  movements  are  involved ; 
either,  that  is,  when  they  remember  the  appropriate  words, 
when  they  have  sung  the  words  to  the  tune,  or  when  they 
have  hummed  the  refrain  aloud.  Here  there  is  clearly  a 
motor  type  of  music  performers.  But  this  motor  require- 
ment is  extremely  variable.  In  some  cases  the  tune  must 
be  associated  with  a  particular  instrument,  and  this  is  done 
only  by  the  reproduction  of  the  proper  sensations  in  the 
finger  tips,  lips,  etc.,  used  in  playing  that  instrument.     On 

1  There  is  not  a  great  deal  of  literature  on  this  topic  ;  see  the  following 
titles:  Egger,  La  parole  interieure ;  Strieker,  Langage  et  Ditisiqiie ;  Stumpf, 
Tonpsychologie,  I.,  pp.  135  ff.;  Wallaschek,  Vierteljahrschrift  fur  Mtisik- 
wissenschaft,  189 1,  heft  I,  and  die  Bedeutung  der  Aphasia  fiir  die  Mtisik- 
vorstellung,  Zeitsch  fiir  Psychol.^  VI.,  heft  I,  and  his  review  of  my  theory  in 
the  same  journal,  VII.,  heft  i;  Wallaschek  has  a  popular  article  also  in  the 
Contemporary  Review,  September,  1894;  Lotze,  Medicinische  Psychologic^ 
p.  480;  G.  E.  Miiller,  Grundlegung  der  Psychophysik,  p.  288;  v.  Franckl- 
Hochwart,  Ueber  den  Verlust  des  musikalischen  Ausdrucksvermogens  in 
Deutsche  Zeitschrift fiir  Nerveiiheilkunde,  189 1,  I.,  pp.  283-29 1;  Oppenheim, 
Charite  Annalen,  XIII.,  1888,  345-383  ;  besides  the  voluminous  literature  of 
aphasia.  An  interesting  late  article,  full  of  bibliographical  references,  is  by 
Brazier,  Revue  Philosophiqtie,  October,  1892,  p.  337. 


440  TJic  Mechanism  of  Revival. 

the  other  hand,  there  are  facts  which  show  that  the  motor 
type  is  only  a  type,  and  that  even  in  these  cases  auditory 
tune  memories  are  necessary.  Musical  recognition  in 
childhood  often  precedes  verbal  recognition.  Musical 
expression  usually  precedes  verbal  expression,  both  when 
there  is  a  clearly  inherited  musical  tendency,^  and  in 
ordinary  imitative  reactions.^  In  cases  of  '  absolute  hear- 
ing,' discussed  below,  we  have  apparently  recognition  of 
pitch  without  any  motor  speech  or  song  images.  Further, 
there  is  the  critical  fact  that  motor  aphasia,  and  even 
verbal  deafness,  may  exist  with  no  impairment  of  the 
musical  faculty  —  no  aimcsia,  as  defects  of  musical  faculty 
are  called  by  Brazier.  This  is  true  both  for  musical  recog- 
nition (case  of  Wernicke),  and  for  musical  expression.^ 
Cases  show,  however,  that  the  latter,  musical  expression, 
is  never  lost,  without  involving  speech  ;  although  musical 
recognition  seems  sometimes,  as  in  Carpenter's  case  and 
in  Brazier's  cases  of  musical  amnesia,  to  be  lost  without 
impairing  speech.*  The  conclusion  that  musical  repro- 
duction is  auditory  is  supported  also  by  such  facts  as  the 
following :  that  we  often  recognize  an  air  after  hearing 
it  once,  even  when  we  have  never  tried  to  sing  it,  and 
could  not  if  we  tried  ;  that  in  singing  or  humming  a  tune, 
we  know  that  we  are  wrong  even  when  we  are  unable  to 
correct  it  ;  tune  hallucinations  are  reported  without  words 

1  Interesting  cases  are  cited  by  Ballet,  loc.  cit.^  p.  24. 

^  My  child  E.  imitated  a  run  of  three  notes,  vocally,  before  she  showed  any 
verbal  imitations. 

3  Cf.  V.  Franckl-Hochwart,  loc.  cit.,  I.,  p.  283. 

4  Wallaschek,  Zt.  f.  Psych.,  VII.,  March,  1893,  P-  671,  in  criticising  this 
statement  of  mine,  cites  cases  of  musical  inability  through  stage-fright,  while 
speech  remains,  as  possible  exceptions.  I  think,  however,  that  stage-fright  is 
such  an  emotional  and  interested  thing  that  the  inability  is  not  really  musical 
at  all,  but  is  rather  due  to  general  nervous  inhibition. 


Internal  Song.  441 

or  vocal  quality,  and  illusions  of  tunes  may  be  started  by 
accidental  sounds ;  ^  many  persons  are  able  to  remember 
and  recall  musical  chords  and  combinations  which  it  is 
impossible  for  the  human  voice  to  reproduce,  i.e.,  we  can 
mentally  depict  harmony  ;  further,  there  are  cases  of  per- 
sons who  can  recognize  the  pitch  of  tones  from  instru- 
ments, but  not  that  of  the  tones  of  their  own  voice/'^  It 
seems  clear,  indeed,  on  the  surface,  that  of  the  elements 
distinguished  above  as  essential   to  musical  reproduction 

—  pitch,  rhythm,  timbre,  and  emotional  tone  —  the  most 
essential,  pitch,  finds  no  adequate  basis  in  motor  speech 
or  song  memories.  The  range  of  intonation  in  speaking 
and  singing  is  too  narrow  to  supply  the  material  for 
musical  reproduction,  although  there  are,  no  doubt,  indi- 
viduals whose  musical  capacity  —  especially  of  expression 

—  is  confined  to  these  limits. 

It  is  probable,  accordingly,  that  there  is  a  brain-centre 
for  tune  memories  —  a  centre  whose  impairment  produces 
so-called  notal  aimisia  —  that  this  centre  is  a  part,  in  func- 
tion, at  least,  if  not  anatomically,  of  the  auditory  centre, 
and  that  cases  will  occur  of  partial  amusia  in  different  per- 
sons, due  to  the  degree  in  which  this  function  involves 
others.^     This   general   conclusion  is   confirmed,  I  think, 

1  Ordinary  internal  tunes  are  usually  stimulated  in  this  way,  as  I  have  said 
above,  Chap.  VI.,  §  5. 

2  Cases  of  v.  Kries  cited  below. 

3  For  example,  musical  deafness  without  verbal  deafness;  case  of  Grant 
Allen  in  Mind,  III.,  p.  157,  and  that  of  Brazier,  he.  cit.,  p.  359.  Bastian, 
loc.  cit.,  p.  664,  quotes  a  case  from  Lasegue  of  an  aphasic  musician,  who 
could  write  nothing  but  passages  of  music  which  he  \\z.A  just  heard.  A  recent 
case  of  Pick's  {Arch.  fUr  Psych.,  1892,  p.  910)  seems  at  first  sight  to  give 
trouble,  i.e..,  a  case  of  loss  of  musical  recognitioii  with  no  impairment  of  musical 
expression.  Yet  Pick's  location  of  the  lesion  as  subcortical  sufficiently  accords 
with  the  view  in  my  text.  The  seat  of  auditory  attention  was  not  injured. 
Cf.  note  on  Pick's  position,  and  the  theory  of  '  muscular  control,'  below 
Chap.  XV.,  §  4. 


442  The  Mechanis7n  of  Revival. 

by  what  follows  on  pitch  memory,  the  only  one  of  the  four 
elements  of  musical  reproduction  which  is  in  order  here. 


§  3.    PitcJi  Recognition. 

The  recognition  of  the  pitch  of  notes  gives  two  cases 
apparently  distinct  from  each  other,  i.e.,  'relative'  and 
'  absolute '  pitch  recognition.  In  relative  recognition  the 
musical  interval  seems  to  supply  the  real  locics  of  the  recog- 
nition. Given  the  initial  note  and  the  proper  rhythm  — 
and  the  rest  of  the  tune  comes  up  by  reason  of  the  asso- 
ciated tone  intervals,  note  by  note.  It  is  the  case  of 
objective  recognition  by  assimilation  of  content,  as  already 
described. 1  Comparatively  few  persons  lack  the  ability  to 
carry  through  a  familiar  tune  mentally.  Absolute  recog- 
nition, on  the  other  hand,  is  a  different  accomplishment ; 
even  among  competent  musicians  it  is  often  ^  conspicu- 
ously absent.  It  is  the  power  of  reproducing  a  note  of 
any  desired  pitch  absolutely  from  memory. 

The  auditory  character  of  all  relative  pitch  recognition 
is  shown  by  the  following  facts  —  in  addition  to  the  general 
considerations  already  adduced:  (i)  Brazier^  cites  cases 
of  aphasic  patients  who  could  speak  words  only  by  singing 
them  :  that  is,  they  must  first  recognize  an  air,  and  then 
arouse  the  motor  speech  function  from  that  cue.  The 
motor  centre  not  being  available  in  these  cases,  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  see  on  what  but  auditory  grounds  the  tune  recogni- 
tion could  proceed.  It  often  occurs,  in  my  own  case,  that 
I  cannot  recall  the  words  of  a  song  until  I  get  the  tune 

1  Chap.  X.,  §  3. 

2  In  the  case  of  some  of  those  who  carry  tuning-forks  in  their  pockets. 
^  Loc.  cit.,  p.  366. 


Pitch  Rccog-iiitioii. 


cb 


443 


started.  Another  case  of  this  kind  is  cited  immediately 
below.  (2)  I  find  it  possible,  with  Paulhan,i  to  think  dif- 
ferent notes  very  clearly  while  the  vocal  organs  are  held 
rio;id.  I  am  able  to  think  one  note  while  I  am  utterins: 
aloud  a  long-drawn-out  vocal  sound,  say  a,  in  a  different 
pitch.  And  lest  it  may  be  said  that  it  is  the  overtones 
which  are  heard  internally  in  this  case,  I  may  add,  that  I 
am  able  with  the  greatest  ease  to  hold  aloud  an  a  sound  at 
c^  sa}^,  and  at  the  same  time  to  cause  a  whole  tune  —  say 
Yankee-doodle  —  to  run  its  course  'in  my  ear.'  Strieker's 
inability  to  think  one  consonant  while  speaking  another  is 
due,  probably,  to  the  fact  that,  in  uttering  labials,  etc., 
pronounced  and  explosive  muscular  combinations  are 
necessary,  and  that  they  have  no  clear  auditory  character, 
being  usually  merged  in  accompanying  vowel  sounds. 
(3)  My  internal  tunes  have  very  decided  pitch  —  deter- 
mined upon  an  instrument  in  a  number  of  cases.  Yet,  as 
I  have  said  above,^  it  is  not  always  the  normal  pitch  of  the 
tune  as  written  and  learned,  nor  is  it  constant  for  recur- 
rences of  the  same  tune. 

In  explaining  pitch  recognition  the  question  of  relative 
pitch  comes  first.  The  very  fact  that  it  is  relative,  means 
that  it  may  be  brought  under  the  law  of  objective  conscious 
recognition  in  general.  If  recognition  be  due  to  assim- 
ilation, relationship,  'fringe,'  in  the  representation  recog- 
nized, and  vary  with  the  degree  of  this  associative  or 
apperceptive  element,  then  recognition  of  each  note  would 
occur,  like  the  recognition  of  any  other  presented  content, 
according  as  it  have  or  have  not  a  train  or  fringe  of  asso- 
ciated elements.  A  tune  is  then  recognized,  because  it  is 
such  a  train.     The  degree  of  precision  in  its  recognition 

1  Loc.  cit.  2  Chap.  VI.,  §  5. 


444  '^^^^  Mechanism  of  Revival. 

depends  upon  the  fineness  of  discrimination  at  the  original 
hearino:  of  it.  So  also  the  fact  that  notes  are  better  reco^:- 
nized  after  the  musical  notation  has  been  learned,  simply 
means  that  additional  elements  are  brought  into  the  com- 
plex by  the  notation  —  elements  which  support  the  claim 
of  the  whole.  With  persons  of  the  motor  type,  further, 
the  motor  speech  and  song  images  are  prominent  in  this 
complex,  and  so  essential,  in  some  cases,  that  recognition 
does  not  occur  without  them.  It  seems  likely,  therefore, 
that  if  we  grant  differences  of  pitch  in  tone  sensations,  the 
recosrnition  of  the  associated  trains  which  we  call  'tunes' 
is  but  an  instance  of  a  broader  mental  phenomenon. 

Absolute  recognition,  on  the  other  hand,  or  '  absolute 
hearing,'  as  it  is  called,  presents  anomalies  which  make  it 
difficult  to  explain  it  as  an  ordinary  case  of  recognition  by 
presented  association.  Either  we  must  find  elements  of 
complexity  in  such  tones  or  confess  that  here  is  an  excep- 
tion to  the  accepted  theory.  I  have  already  given  the  gen- 
eral principles  by  which  this  case  is  to  be  explained  :  but 
it  may  be  well  to  apply  them  now  to  a  concrete  instance.^ 
The  question  which  may  be  asked,  is  this  :  Can  any  one 
identify  a  note  of  any  pitch  simply  and  only  from  the 
tone-quality  of  the  note  itself  t 

One  of  the  latest  contributions  to  this  question  is  from 
V.  Kries,^  who  is  himself  a  musician.  He  possesses  the 
so-called  absolute  hearing.  He  also  publishes  details 
supplied  from  other  similar  cases.  He  argues  that  the 
ability  to  identify  a  single  isolated  note  cannot  be  due 
to  musical    practice,    i.e.,   cannot  be  a  refinement    of   in- 

1  See  above,  Chap.  X.,  §  3. 

2  Das  absohite  Gehor,  in  Zeitschrift fiir  Psychologic  und  Physiologie  der  Sin- 
nesorgane,  III.,  1 892,  p.  257. 


Pitch  Recognition,  445 

terval  recognition,^  because  (i)  he  has  had  this  power 
from  early  boyhood,  as  also  have  others  whom  he  cites  ; 
(2)  some  of  the  most  celebrated  musicians  have  not 
been  able  to  acquire  it  at  all,  although  their  sense  of  inter- 
val became  wonderfully  acute;  and  (3)  the  power  in  him- 
self and  others  varies  with  the  instrument  which  sounds 
the  note,  and  is  not  best  with  the  instruments  used  most. 
He  recognizes  notes  from  the  piano  best,  from  string  and 
wind  instruments,  especially  the  violin,  but  not  those  from 
tuning-forks,  or  steam  and  other  whistles,  or  notes  sung  or 
whistled  with  the  lips  —  a  state  of  things  shown  with  some 
variations  also  in  several  of  his  correspondents.  Now  the 
violin  is  with  v.  Kries  a  late  accomplishment,  while  he  has, 
of  course,  been  hearing  singing  all  his  life,  accompanying 
singers  on  the  piano  from  his  twelfth  year,  and  whistling 
habitually.  Indeed,  these  last  facts  —  showing  the  influ- 
ence of  timbre  on  pitch  recognition — lead  him  to  deny 
that  there  are  any  revived  images  of  any  kind  belonging 
intrinsically  to  musical  recognition.  He  finds  it  to  be  a 
case  of  the  '  association  by  naming '  as  established  by  Leh- 
mann ;  that  is,  v.  Kries  was  not  able  to  recognize  notes 
until  after,  in  boyhood,  he  had  learned  their  names  and 
written  signs.  The  case  is  analogous,  therefore,  he  holds, 
to  the  recognitions  which  Lehmann  found  to  follow  from 
the  simple  lettering  and  naming  of  shades  of  wool  not 
before  separately  recognized. 

This  conclusion  of  v.  Kries  is  lame,  I  think.  It  does 
not  account  for  the  differences  due  to  timbre  mentioned 
above ;  for  the  notation  is  the  same  practically  for  all 
the  instruments  and  for  the  voice,  v.  Kries  admits  this, 
and  says  it  remains  for  the  future  to  provide  a  theory  of 

1  So  Stumpf,  loc.  cit.,  I.,  p.  2S0. 


44^  The  Mechanism  of  Revival. 

this  influence  due  to  timbre  —  leaning,  however,  as  he 
does,  to  the  overtone  theory.  Further,  he  agrees  with 
other  observers  in  finding  that  chords  are  better  recognized 
than  single  notes  ;  this  would  indicate  that  recognition  is 
lue  in  some  way  to  the  complexity  and  variety  of  the  tone 
content,  rather  than  to  the  accident  of  naming.  It  is  pos- 
sible, perhaps,  to  give  due  weight  to  the  influence  of  the 
name  association  in  a  theory  which  does  more  justice  to 
the  essential  facts.  This  and  other  cases  of  the  recognition 
of  apparently  isolated  sense  qualities  can  be  brought,  I 
think,  under  the  law  of  * sensori-motor  association'  already 
formulated,  according  to  which  the  recognition  is  due 
simply  to  the  modification  of  the  a  element  in  my  formula  ^ 
of  attention,  i.e.,  to  the  relative  ease  of  adjustment  of  the 
attention,  to  one  particular  tone-pitch  as  such. 

Several  considerations  may  be  urged  in  favour  of  this 
view:  (i)  It  brings  absolute  and  relative  tone  recognition 
under  a  single  principle  ;  the  former  arises  on  the  motor 
side,  the  latter  on  the  sensory,  or  assimilative  side,  of  the 
one  process ;  (2)  it  accounts  for  the  greater  relative  ease 
of  recognition  of  chords  and  compound  tones ;  apart 
from  their  complexity  of  content,  they  carry  greater  and 
more  varied  dynamogenic  influence  ;  (3)  it  makes  it  pos- 
sible to  consider  tone  recognition  in  some  cases  hereditary, 
as  the  facts  {i.e.,  cases  of  v.  Kries  and  others)  seem  to 
require ;  persons  have  from  birth  a  tendency  to  give  the 
attention  with  greater  facility  to  one  class  of  stimulations 
than  to  another  —  so  the  doctrine  of  types  teaches.  Why 
may  not   this   difference   extend   also   to  different   notes  ? 

1  Above,  Chap.  X.,  §  3.  Instead  of  Hoffding's  sentence  {Phil.  Stud.,  VIII., 
p.  90),  ^  die  organische  Ftinctionen  gehsn  leichier'  in  absolute  recognition,  I 
should  say,  the  psycho-physical  function  of  attention  *  goes  easier.' 


PitcJi  Recogrnition. 


<b 


447 


The  analysis  given  above  of  the  speech  function  leads  us 
to  see  what  refinements  are  possible  in  the  recognition  of 
words.  Even  the  recognition  of  particular  classes  of  words, 
as  nouns,  may  be  lost  while  other  words  are  correctly 
used.  Brazier  cites  a  case  in  which  the  visual  time  nota- 
tion of  written  music  was  retained  while  the  pitch  notation 
in  the  same  music  was  lost.  A  corresponding  native  re- 
finement on  the  motor  side,  i.e.,  in  the  attention,  is  all  that 
this  theory  requires,  and  if  it  is  not  now  evident  that  such 
refinement  exists,  a  great  deal  of  this  book  has  been  writ- 
ten in  vain.  Refinements  on  the  sensory  side,  as  seen  in 
association,  are  dependent,  indeed,  upon  refinements  on  the 
motor  side.  The  variations  in  motor  reactions  are  the  win- 
nowing, selecting  agents  of  all  mental  progress ;  (4)  it 
enables  us  to  explain  the  apparent  influence  of  timbre,  a  fact 
not  explained  by  any  other  theory.  The  fact  that  isolated 
tones  from  some  instruments  are  recognized,  while  from 
others  they  are  not,  I  hold  to  arise  from  differences  in  the 
type  of  attention  exerted  in  the  several  cases  respectively. 
A  'visual'  musician  is  most  likely  to  recognize  tones  from 
instruments  whose  manipulation  or  notation  involves  much 
visual  attention;  an  'auditive,'  notes  from  those  which 
exercise  hearing  in  most  varied  and  exclusive  ways ;  and  a 
'motor,'  notes  from  those  in  connection  with  which  mus- 
cular attention  is  at  its  best.  It  is  remarkable  that  in  all 
of  v.  Kries's  recognitions,  the  method  of  learning  was 
probably  by  visual  note-reading,  —  piano,  violin,  etc., — 
while  his  non-recognitions — his  own  voice,  voice  of  others, 
steam  whistles,  lip-whistling,  etc.  — are  apparently  in  cases 
in  which  the  auditory  indications  did  not  include  such  sys- 
tematic visual  attention.  Now  on  the  supposition  that 
V.  Kries  is  a  'visual,'  that  the  pitch  elements  of  the  atten- 


44^  The  Mechanisvi  of  Revival. 

tion  in  his  case  are  most  readily  stimulated  from  the  centre 
for  sight,  we  have  a  clear  application  of  our  law.^  Further, 
V.  Kries  was  unable  to  recognize  tones  before  he  learned 
musical  *  naming,'  which,  it  is  natural  to  suppose,  was  at 
first  visual.  The  case  of  musical  alexia  already  quoted 
from  Brazier,  shows  the  importance  of  a  single  class  of 
notation  memories,  although  it  involved  the  loss,  not 
of  tone  recognition,  but  of  musical  execution  ;2  (5)  one  of 
v.  Kries's  cases  of  'absolute  hearing'  seems  to  be,  from 
what  he  reports  of  it,  motor  in  its  type  :  a  young  woman 
who  recognized  tones  when  sung  only  by  means  of  'internal 
repetition,'  to  herself,  of  the  notes  sung  {das  Bcdiirfniss 
be  standi  sie  innerlich  nacJizusingeii)?  This  mneidicJies 
NacJismgen,  in  a  case  where  the  real  note  is  already  heard, 
is  probably  motor,  a  supposition  supported  by  the  fact  that 
the  woman  was  a  'skilful  singer  herself.'  Her  quicker 
recognition  of  piano  tones  might  be  because  of  the  motor 
practice  in  hand  execution  ;  (6)  this  point  of  view  affords 
us  an  additional  reason  for  the  fact,  which  all  admit,  that 
the  best  recognitions  are  for  notes  of  moderate  pitch,  — 
not  very  high  or  very  low ;  for,  being  of  most  frequent 
occurrence,  these  notes  exercise  the  attention  most,  and  so 
get  most  easily  and  readily  accommodated  to.  And  it  is 
also  easy  to  see  that,  for  this  reason,  their  discrimination 
becomes  finer  and  better  ;  (7)  in  the  experiments  already 
referred  to,  Fere  found  different  dynamogenic  effects  to 
follow  the  hearing  of  the  different  notes  of  the  musical 
scale,  and  the  greatest  effect  to  follow  the  notes  in  the 

^  Of  course,  such  an  application  is  only  an  illustration;  the  details  of  the 
individual's  life  and  education  —  the  questions  'why?'  and  'to  what  extent  ?' 
he  is  visual,  motor,  etc.  —  make  any  single  case  extremely  complex. 

'^  Loc.  ciL,  p.  363. 

3  loc.  cit.,  p.  273. 


Pitch  Recognition.  449 

middle  of  the  gamut ;  this  is  nothing  short  of  a  demonstra- 
tion of  variations  in  the  a  element  in  attention  for  differ- 
ent pitches. 

Finally,  if  '  motor  associates '  be  at  the  bottom  of  pure- 
tone  recognition,  we  would  expect  something  of  the  same 
kind  in  the  case  of  colour  and  odour  qualities.  This  is  the 
sphere  of  Lehmann's  results  in  Benciinungsassociation  to 
which  V.  Krics  appeals.  Now  Fere  claims  to  have  demon- 
strated this  very  point,  i.e.^  that  colour  discrimination  and 
recognition  are  improved  by  muscular  exercise.  He  found 
it  possible  to  bring  back  purple  recognition  to  purple-blind 
hysterics,  simply  by  muscular  movement.  It  is  a  ready 
deduction,  also,  from  the  opposite  fact  that  the  different 
colours,  beginning  with  red,  have  diminishing  dynamogenic 
effect  as  measured  on  the  squeeze-dynamometer. 

The  details  now  cited,  in  the  case  of  speech  and  tune 
revival,  may  be  taken  as  detailed  examples  of  the  application 
of  my  general  theory  of  assimilation  to  detailed  instances. 
The  position  of  the  theory  as  regards  recognition  of 
tones  may  be  stated  in  the  words  of  James,  quoted  from 
his  review  of  my  earlier  article  :  "  It  offers  a  basis  of 
mediation  between  the  two  theories  of  Recognition  over 
which  Hoffding  and  Lehmann  have  recently  waged  war. 
One  theory,  stated  in  its  radical  form,  says  that  a  thing 
looks  familiar  to  us  when  it  recalls  to  us  its  past  self.  The 
other  theory  says  it  looks  or  sounds  familiar  when  it  recalls 
its  past  siirroiuidmgs.  The  difficulty  with  the  latter  view 
is,  that  the  supposed  surroundings  fail  to  become  explicitly 
conscious  when  the  recognition  is  confined  to  the  bare 
'sense  of  familiarity.'  How  do  we  know,  then,  that  they 
are  at  all  tending  to  revive  }     But  Professor  Baldwin,  in 

2  G 


450  The  Meckmtism  of  Revival. 

making  them  sink  to  the  level  of  mere  motor  associates 
of  former  acts  of  attention,  gives  a  good  reason  why  our 
consciousness  of  them  should  be  so  indistinct,  and  why  at 
the  same  time  we  should  so  unmistakably  greet  the  sensory 
experience  which  they  accompany  as  one  already  ours."  ^ 

An  informal  criticism  by  Professor  Hoffding  is  answered 
in  another  place. ^  Wallaschek^  objects  to  my  view,  that 
as  all  persons  have  the  requisite  factors,  all  should  have 
absolute  tone  recognition.  But  the  reason  they  do  not  is, 
I  think,  not  a  fault  of  their  reproduction,  but  of  their  per- 
ception. Some  cannot  recognize  tones  again,  because  they 
do  not  closety  distinguish  them  in  the  first  instance,  except, 
perhaps,  when  they  occur  together. 

It  may  be  well  to  note,  finally,  as  among  the  minor 
questions  which  this  general  theory  of  recognition  answers, 
is  that  of  so-called  'paramnesia,'  —  the  false  recognition  of 
new  localities,  interiors,  etc.,  the  sense  that  an  event  has 
happened  to  one  before.  It  is  due  to  the  artificial  or  acci- 
dental stirring  up  of  an  old  attention  series.  Any  new 
experience  which  gives  exactly  the  same  strains,  etc.,  in 
the  attention  complex,  as  an  earlier  experience,  would 
seem  familiar,  at  the  same  time  that  it  did  not  seem 
objectively  identical. 

1  The  Psychological  Review,  I.,  1894,  p.  210. 

2  See  p.  472. 

3  Zt.filr  Psych.,  VII.,  March,  1894,  p.  68. 


CHAPTER    XV. 

The  Origin  of  Attention. 
§  I.    Voluntary  Attention. 

The  foregoing  examination  of  current  theories  of  devel- 
opment has  served  to  throw  into  relief  the  elements  of  the 
problem.  It  has  also  shown  that  a  theory  of  adaptation 
must  have  reference  to  the  repetition  of  stimulations, 
fundamentally,  not  of  movements  ;  so  far  a  presumptive 
proof  of  my  theory,  which  is  the  only  one,  as  far  as  I 
know,  —  based  as  it  is  upon  the  work  of  Darwin  and 
Spencer,  —  consciously  drawn  to  supply  this  want. 

The  three  psychological  stages  or  levels  at  which  we  find 
consciousness  getting  new  accommodations  have  already 
been  pointed  out,^  and  the  claim  made  that  the  '  law  of 
excess,'  enunciated  above,  applies  to  each  and  all  of  them. 
I  shall  now  take  them  in  inverse  order  for  closer  ex- 
amination. The  first  question  is,  accordingly :  How  is 
the  conscious  person  able  to  perform  a  new  movement 
voluntarily  t 

The  first  remark  is  this  :  To  make  any  movement  vol- 
untarily, the  attention  must  be  fixed  upon  some  kind  of  an 
idea  which  represents  this  movement.  I  do  not  care  to 
repeat  the  analysis  which  I  have  published  elsewhere,^  and 

1  Above,  p.  i8o.  2  Handbook,  II,  Chaps.  XII.,  XV. 

451 


452  The  Origin  of  Attention. 

which  James  has  also  made,  much  more  forcibly/  of  volition 
back  to  its  last  citadel  —  voluntary  attention  to  an  idea. 
Everybody,  it  seems,  now  admits  it.  If  the  object  of 
volition,  then,  is  a  movement,  an  idea  that  meafis  the 
movement,  must  be  attended  to. 

But  in  the  case  of  learning  a  thing  for  the  first  time  the 
movement  required  is  not  an  old,  but  a  new  one  :  ^  hence 
it  cannot  be  a  mental  image  or  memory  of  the  movement, 
to  which  the  attention  is  directed ;  it  must  be  an  external 
movement  or  event,  of  some  kind,  which  in  some  way 
manages  to  send  its  dynamogenic  influence  into  the  motor 
channels  required. 

Now  to  acquire  a  movement  seen,  or  in  some  other  way 
externally  setup, — this  is  exactly  conscious  imitation. 
The  problem  then  reduces  itself  to  the  process  of  per- 
sistent effortful  imitation  ;  and  we  have  to  ask  how  atten- 
tion to  a  movement  seen,  for  example,  enables  the  child  or 
man  to  come  to  perform  this  movement  himself. 

The  process  of  persistent  imitation,  as  far  as  its  mechan- 
ism is  concerned,  has  been  depicted  and  figured  above.^ 
The  point  essential  to  our  present  topic  has  been  only 
casually  mentioned,  however,  i.e.,  that  the  difference  be- 
tween '  simple  *  and  '  persistent '  imitation,  of  the  try-try- 
again  type,  is  that,  in  the  former,  an  earlier  muscular 
movement  is  repeated  without  variation,  while  in  the  latter, 

1  Princ.  of  Psychology,  Vol.  I.,  Chap.  XI. 

2  Unless,  indeed,  it  has  been  accidentally  performed  before.  I  have  already 
admitted  that  many  useful  acts  are  acquired  by  such  happy  accident,  and  it 
will  be  seen  later  that  the  *  excess '  discharge  is  of  use  mainly  in  increasing 
these  happy  hits.  But  no  one  will  deny  that  the  '  hits '  occur  mainly  through 
the  child's  imitations  in  cases  of  complex  action,  such  as  speech,  writing, 
sewing,  etc. 

3  Chap.  XIII.,  §  2. 


I 


Voluntary  Aitcniion.  453 

the  earlier  movement  is  modified  in  such  a  way  as  to 
approximate,  more  and  more  closely,  the  movement-copy 
attended  to. 

In  persistent  imitation  the  first  reaction  is  not  repeated. 
Hence  we  must  suppose  the  development  of  a  function  of 
co-ordination  by  which  the  two  regions  excited  respectively 
by  the  original  suggestion  and  the  reaction  first  made,  co- 
alesce in  a  coniuion  more  voliiminons  and  intense  stimulation 
of  the  motor  cejitre.  A  movement  is  thus  produced  which, 
by  reason  of  its  greater  mass  and  diffusion,  includes  more 
of  the  elements  of  the  movement  seen  and  copied.  This 
is  again  reported  by  eye  or  ear,  giving  a  new  excitement, 
which  is  again  co-ordinated  with  the  original  stimulation 
and  with  the  after-effects  of  the  earHer  imitations.  The 
result  is  yet  another  motor  stimulation,  or  effort,  of  still 
greater  mass  and  diffusion,  which  includes  yet  more  ele- 
ments of  the  'copy.'  And  so  on,  until  simply  by  its  in- 
creased niasSy  including  the  motor  excitement  of  attention 
itself,  —  by  the  greater  range  and  variety  of  the  motor  ele- 
ments thus  enervated, — in  short,  by  the  excess  discharge, 
the  'copy'  is  completely  reproduced.  The  effort  thus  suc- 
ceeds.     (See  Fig.  XIV.,  above,  in  Chap.  XIII.,  §  2.) 

This,  it  is  evident,  is  just  the  principle  of  'excess,'  and 
it  is  very  easy  to  find  in  it  the  origin  of  the  attention.  The 
attention  is  the  mental  function  corresponding  to  the 
habitual  motor  co-ordination  of  the  processes  of  heightened 
or  '  excess  '  discharge.  The  exact  elements  which  it  in- 
cludes have  already  been  pointed  out,  and  they  will  be 
spoken  of  again. 

Let  the  child  once  withdraw  attention  from  his  copy, 
let  him  be  distracted  by  bird  or  beast,  and  woe  to  his 
chance  of  learning  the  new  movement.      The  whole  con- 


454  ^/^^'  Origin  of  Attention. 

glomerate  conscious  content  falls  to  pieces  and  he  goes 
back  to  be  a  creature  of  suggestion.  But  let  him  keep  on 
attending  —  strongly,  faithfully,  well  —  and  note  his  actions. 
His  whole  physical  iDcrsonahty  gets  concentrated  in  con- 
joint, then  allied,  then  unified,  then  convulsive  discharge 
upon  the  member  which,  by  habit  or  previous  use,  is  nearest 
to  the  copy  requirement.  He  rolls  his  tongue,  bites  his  lip, 
sways  his  body,  works  his  legs,  winks  his  eyes,  etc.,  until 
every  scheming  nerve  and  tendon  bends  to  do  the  task. 
His  blood-vessels,  even,  fill  toward  the  hand  he  works  with. 
This  occurs  only  in  attention,  and  this  is  the  excess  wave 
by  which  here  in  the  highest  consciousness,  as  there  in 
the  lowest  organism,  acconiuiodation  to  new  stimulations  is 
secured. 

A  direct  examination  of  the  infant's  earliest  voluntary 
movements  shows  the  growth  in  mass,  diffusion,  and  lack 
of  precision  which  this  theory  requires.  In  acquiring  the 
associations  of  elements  involved  in  successful  handwrit- 
ing,i  the  young  child  uses  hand,  then  hand  and  arm,  then 
hand,  arm,  tongue,  face,  and  finally  his  whole  body.  In 
speaking,  also,  he  '  mouths  '  his  sounds,  screws  his  tongue 
and  hands,  etc.  And  he  only  gets  his  movements  reduced 
to  order  after  they  have  become  by  effort  massive  and 
diffuse.  I  find  no  support  whatever  in  the  children  them- 
selves, for  the  current  view  of  psychologists,  i.e.,  that 
voluntary  combinations  are  gradually  built  up  by  adding 
up  earlier  voluntary  movements,  muscle  to  muscle,  and 
group  to  group.  This  is  true  only  after  each  of  these 
elements  has  itself  become  voluntary.  Such  a  view  im- 
plies that  the  infant,  at  this  stage,  has  a  kind  of  separate 
consciousness  of   the   different    muscles,    including   those 

1  See  the  details  given  above,  Chap.  V.,  §  2, 


Voluntary  A  lieu t ion,  455 

which  he  has  never  learned  to  use,  which  is  false  ;  and  is 
able  to  avail  himself  of  muscles  which  he  has  not  learned 
to  use,  which  is  equally  false  —  not  to  allude  to  the  fact 
that  it  leaves  suspended  in  mid-air  the  problem  as  to  how 
the  new  combination,  intended  and  dwelt  upon  by  atten- 
tion, gets  itself  actually  carried  out  by  the  muscles. 

When  muscular  effort  thus  succeeds,  by  the  simple  fact 
of  increased  mass  and  diffusion  of  reaction,  the  useless 
elements  fall  away  because  they  have  no  emphasis.  The 
desired  motor  elements  are  reinforced  by  their  agreement 
with  the  '  copy,'  by  the  dwelling  of  attention  upon  them, 
by  the  pleasure  which  accompanies  success.  In  short,  the 
law  of  survival  of  the  fittest  by  natural,  or,  in  this  case, 
so-called  '  organic  '  selection,  assures  the  persistence  of  the 
reaction  thus  gained  by  effort. 

I  may  merely  note  in  passing,  also,  that  this  theory  of 
the  physical  process  underlying  volition  is  not  open  to  the 
objections  commonly  urged  against  earlier  views.  How 
can  we  conceive  the  relation  of  mind  and  body  .'*  The 
alternatives  heretofore  current  are  three  :  either  the 
mind  interferes  with  brain  processes,  or  it  directs  brain 
processes,  or  it  does  nothing ;  these  are  the  three.  Now, 
on  the  view  here  presented,  none  of  these  is  true.  The 
function  of  the  mind  is  simply  to  have  a  persistent  pres- 
entation—  a  suggestion,  a  'copy.'  The  law  of  motor 
reaction,  plus  the  accumulated  excess,  does  the  rest.  The 
muscles  express  the  influence  of  the  central  excitement ; 
this  sets  inwards  as  more  excitement,  which  we  call  atten- 
tion and  emotion,  and  this  the  muscles  again  express  ;  and 
so  on,  until  by  the  law  of  lavish  outlay,  which  nature  so 
often  employs,  the  requisite  muscular  combination  is  se- 
cured and  persists.      In  the  words  of  Zielicn,  "  the  appear- 


456  The   Origin   of  Attention. 

ance  of  the  concomitant  psychical  processes  themselves  is 
the  only  fact  that  needs  explanation.  .  .  .  The  fitness 
of  actions  is  quite  conceivable  as  the  result  of  natural 
laws."  ^ 

Besides  the  general  fact  that  this  view  makes  the  stimu- 
lus or  copy  the  essential  thing  for  reproduction,  it  takes 
another  step  as  important  for  psychology,  I  think,  as  the 
former  is  for  general  biology  :  the  identification  of  vol- 
untary attention  with  motor  reaction,  at  once  habitual,  in 
the  main,  but  yet  'excessive,'  in  part,  in  the  centres  of 
highest  co-ordination.  Attention  is,  in  the  main,  an  accu- 
mulation, due  to  habit. 

This  is  considered  a  grave  question  by  many  who  forget 
that  whatever  the  voluntary  life  is,  every  child  has  to  pass 
into  it  from  the  involuntary  life,  without  a  miracle  ;  and  it 
may  be  well  to  present  some  general  considerations,  in 
addition  to  the  facts  of  infant  life  now  mentioned. 

I.  It  should  be  remembered,  I  may  repeat,  that  the 
problem  of  adaptation  is  really  the  problem  of  selection. 
How  does  an  organism  select  the  stimulations  which  are 
profitable  to  it .?  It  is  in  answer  to  this  question  that  the 
'  excess '  function  is  postulated,  and  has  been  in  the  '  in- 
creased nervous  discharge  '  of  biological  theories  of  the 
Spencer-Bain  type.  Now  in  attention  we  have,  undoubt- 
edly, the  one  selective  function  of  consciousness.  Who 
claims  anything  else  }  Whatever  attention  may  do  besides, 
all  the  selections  which  consciousness  makes  are  due  to  it. 

1  Physiol.  Psychology,  p.  274.  Ziehen  recognizes  the  essential  sameness  of 
the  selecting  process  for  reflex  (phylogenetic)  and  voluntary  (ontogenetic) 
selections.  He  says:  "In  both  cases  the  process  of  selection  is  the  essential 
factor  in  the  development  of  this  fitness.  In  the  case  of  reflex  action  .  .  . 
this  selection  is  essentially  a  phylogenetic  process:  in  the  case  of  [voluntary] 
actions,  it  is  an  ontogenetic  process." 


1 


Vohiniary  Attention.  457 

We  have,  therefore,  the  requirement  that  these  two  things 
should  be  connected  in  theory,  ?>.,  the  adaptations  of 
lower  organisms,  and  the  selections  of  consciousness. 
Now  it  only  gives  further  strength  both  to  the  theory  of 
the  biological  selections  of  the  lower  organisms,  and  to 
that  of  the  conscious  selections  of  the  higher,  if  we  find 
that  one  psycho-physical  principle  runs  through  the  entire 
development. 

2.  Farther,  the  conscious  value  of  a  stimulus  to  the 
organism,  as  a  whole,  is  pleasure-pain  effect.  This  we 
have  identified  with  some  form  of  psycho-physical  pro- 
cess, in  the  nervous  centres,  which  tends  to  discharge 
in  the  excess  wave.  In  this  again,  as  has  been  said,  I  am 
following  the  best  theories  of  the  past  (Darwin,  Bain, 
Meynert).  If  now  my  proposition  concerning  attention 
be  true,  it  would  follow  that  in  the  higher  representative 
processes,  attention  is  the  great  locus  of  hedonic  conscious- 
ness. It  is  only  necessary  to  reflect  upon  the  conditions 
of  'ideal  tone' — the  pleasures  of  the  intellectual  and 
emotional  life  —  in  the  exposition,  for  example,  of  Ward 
and  the  Herbartians,  to  be  convinced  that  this  is  true. 
Developmental  considerations  enter  here  to  complicate  the 
case  ;  ^  but  it  is  sufficient  to  note  in  this  place,  that  pleasure 
is,  in  lower  organisms,  a  sign  of  vital  profit,  and,  by  its 
discharge  in  the  excess  wave,  an  agent  of  adaptation  ;  and 
the  same  is  true  of  intellectual  and  sentimental  pleasure 
and  profit.  They  indicate  conscious  adaptation  by  the 
phenomenon  of  attention,  which  is  the  genetic  channel  of 
an  excess  wave  the  same  in  kind.  All  the  evidence  which 
goes  to  show  that  no  movement  can  be  made  unless  the 
attention  gets  fixed  upon  some  idea  that  represents  this 

1  See  below,  §  3  in  this  chapter,  on  the  'Development  of  Attention.' 


458  The   Origin  of  At  lent  ion. 

movement,  and  that  no  movement  can  be  prevented  upon 
the  representation  of  which  (itself  or  by  proxy)  the  atten- 
tion is  fixed  —  all  this  evidence  shows  also,  that  attention 
is  some  kind  of  generalized  motor  phenomenon.  General- 
ized, because  it  bears  equally  on  all  presented  contents. 
All  initiation  of  voluntary  movement  is  a  matter  of  atten- 
tion, and  all  voluntary  inhibition  or  control  of  movement  a 
matter  of  withdrawal  of  attention.  Now  this  is  just  what 
the  excess  wave  ought  to  do  —  come  to  the  aid  of  that 
which  claims  by  highest  right  the  aid  of  accumulated 
habit,  that  which,  by  this  aid,  is  selected  for  doing,  chosen, 
willed  ;  and  by  its  withdrawal  to  prevent  that  which  should, 
by  the  same  tests,  be  ruled  out  and  denied. 

§  2.    Reflex  and  ^Primary '  Attention. 

I  have  elsewhere  argued  for  the  view  that  reflex  atten- 
tion is  an  affair  of  motor  association.  The  facts  so  evi- 
dently show  that  there  is  no  mental  initiative  in  the  case 
of  a  violent  drawing  of  attention — as  by  a  clap  of  thunder, 
or  a  flash  of  light  —  that  the  problem  is,  not  to  prove  that 
the  entire  psychological  phenomena  is  a  change  in  the  con- 
tent of  consciousness,  but  merely  to  determine  what  kind 
of  a  change  it  is.  I  have  proposed  to  call  consciousness 
when  occupied  with  such  reflex  attention  *  reactive,'  since 
the  essential  thing  about  reflex  attention  is  the  attitude  or 
reactive  condition  in  which  one  finds  himself  as  soon  as 
his  surprise  —  after  such  a  clap  of  thunder  —  allows  him  to 
ask  himself  the  question.  Certain  muscular  tensions,  vary- 
ing somewhat  with  the  kind  of  sensation  or  image  to  which 
his  attention  is  drawn  —  this  seems  to  be  all  he  finds.  It 
seems  quite  in  the  line  of  fact,  therefore,  to  say  that  reflex 


Reflex  and  'Primary'  Attention.  459 

attention  is  a   consciousness  of  a  group  of  muscular  and 
organic  processes  fixed  in  certain  forms  by  habit. 

The  earliest  form  of  attention  is  that  directed  upon  sense 
qualities.  It  may  be  called  'primary  attention,'  in  the  phrase 
of  late  writers  (Hoffding,  Ladd),  or  'conation,'  considered 
as  the  active  side  of  consciousness.  It  is  by  indulgence 
only  that  the  term  'attention'  is  used  for  it,  since  when 
we  use  that  word  we  have  in  mind  so  distinctly  the  exact 
tensions  and  contractions  habitual  in  our  developed  lives 
of  attention.  But  if  the  general  view  which  I  am  advo- 
cating is  true,  we  should  expect  to  find,  in  all  conscious- 
ness, the  presence  of  such  a  motor  element  ;  and  while  in 
any  particular  case  the  'motor  associates'  may  not  be 
special  enough  to  give  well-marked  tone  to  the  content, 
yet  it  should,  in  its  real  nature,  be  called  a  phenomenon  of 
attention.  The  place  of  this  early  attention  may  be  made 
plainer  in  the  next  paragraph. 

§  3.    The  Development  of  Attentio7i :    Sensori-Moior 
Association. 

Assuming  the  answer  now  given  to  the  question  of 
the  mechanism  of  speech,  considered  as  a  typical  volun- 
tary function,  some  additional  considerations  arise  which 
had  not  been  suggested,  as  far  as  I  am  aware,  before 
my  first  publication  of  them,^  and  which  bring  us  back 
to  our  problem  of  the  development  of  attention. 

In  the  first  place,  I  find  in  my  own  case  and  from 
experiments  with  others,  that  the  presence  or  absence 
of  elements  of  movement  in  the  consciousness  of  a  word 
depends  in  many  individuals  largely  upon  the  direction  of 

1  See  the  article  already  mentioned  in  the  Philosophical  Review,  II.,  1893, 
pp.  385  ff. 


460  The  Origin  of  Attention. 

the  attention}  If  the  attention  be  directed  to  the  vocal 
organs, — either  one's  own,  or  some  one's  else, — move- 
ments of  the  tongue,  lips,  and  larynx  are  clearly  felt  in  the 
organs,  sometimes  also  by  touch,  and  may  be  seen.  If,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  attention  be  directed  to  the  ear,  and  the 
words  be  thought  of  as  sound,  these  muscular  sensations 
fall  perceptibly  away  or  disappear.  This  indicates  that 
there  are  two  great  speech  types,  a  motor  type  and  a 
sensory  type,  according  as  the  attention  is  given  in  one 
direction  or  the  other  —  a  distinction  of  types  now  familiar 
in  connection  with  reaction-time  experiments. 

The  reaction  time  is,  in  a  great  percentage  of  cases, 
shorter  when  the  attention  gives  a  so-called  '  motor  '  re- 
action, i.e.,  is  directed  to  the  reacting  member,  rather 
than  to  the  signal.  I  have  experimented  to  some  extent 
with  a  view  to  finding  in  what  per  cent  of  individuals 
one  kind  of  hand  reaction  is  normal  as  against  the  other 
kind.  The  results  show  that,  among  uninstructed  groups 
of  students,  reacting  for  the  first  time  in  the  labora- 
tory, about  one-quarter  of  the  entire  number,  when  ques- 
tioned immediately  after  giving  a  series  of  sound-hand 
reactions,  were  clearly  conscious  of  having  paid  attention 
to  the  movement  of  the  hand.  The  average  time  of  their 
reactions  is  considerably  lower  than  the  general  average. 
This  result  shows  clearly,  not  only  that  the  difference  in 
time  of  the  two  kinds  of  reactions  is  a  real  difference  in 
many  persons,  but  also  that  there  are  individuals  who 
normally  react  most  readily,  and  most  effectively,  in  one 
way  or  the  other.  The  bearing  on  speech  is  this :  it 
becomes  at  once  evident  that  the  most  rapid  speakers  are 

1  Paulhan  notices  the  influence  of  the  attention  (Joe.  cit..,  p.  43),  but  does 
not  inquire  into  it. 


* 


TJie  DevcLopvicjit  of  Attention.  461 

generally,  ceteris  paribus,  'motors'  in  their  type.  The 
direction  of  the  attention  serves  to  arouse  the  organs  of 
speech  in  advance,  by  an  influence,  the  nature  of  which  is 
still  to  be  explained.^ 

Now  certain  questions  arise  here  which  are  directly 
pertinent  to  our  present  topic  :  Is  a  person  motor,  visual, 
or  auditory,  in  his  speech,  and  in  his  reactions  generally, 
because  he  has  strengthened  a  particular  kind  of  memories 
by  the  prevailing  concentration  of  his  attention  upon  them? 
Or  does  he  give  motor  or  sensory  attention  and  reaction, 
because  of  the  predominant  strength  of  a  certain  class  of 
his  memories  ?  Probably  both  of  these  positions  are  true  ; 
and  each  of  them  is  of  great  importance  in  the  education 
of  speech,  and  other  motor  functions,  as  well  as  for  the 
theory  which  I  am  developing.  The  case  seems  to  be  the 
exhibition,  on  a  large  scale,  of  what  we  find  to  be  true  of 
the  relation  of  attention  to  sensations  generally.  Increased 
intensity  of  sensation  tends  to  draw  the  attention  ;  and  the 
attention  increases  the  intensity  of  sensations.  It  is  one 
of  those  processes  of  'reasoning  in  a  circle'  which  charac- 
terize the  growth  of  body  and  mind  together.  Another 
instance  is  this,  for  which  we  have  already  seen  some 
probable  reasons  :  pleasure  arises  from  healthy  function, 
while  healthy  function  is  directly  assisted  by  pleasure. 

The  relation  which  we  have  now  discovered,  however,  be- 
tween a  person's  'type,'  and  the  movements  and  habits  of  his 
attention,  is  capable  of  a  clear  psycho-physical  explanation. 

We  know  that  increasing  intensity  of  sensation  liberates 
energy  increasingly  toward  the  motor  centres.      A  strong 

1  To  quote  my  own  case  again  —  I  find  it  impossible  to  think  of  a  French 
sentence  without  keeping  my  attention  on  the  visual  picture  of  the  printed 
signs;  but  I  can  follow  a  German  sentence  by  memories  of  speech  movements 
with  no  trace  of  visual  attention. 


462  The  Origin  of  Attention, 

sensation  tends  to  excite  more  movement  than  a  weak 
one.  It  is  probable,  therefore,  that  a  given  degree  of  in- 
tensity of  each  particular  sense-quality  involves  a  motor 
ingredient,  as  an  element  in  its  conscious  value  —  be  it  in 
part  due  to  a  setting-back  process  from  the  motor  centres 
themselves,  or  in  whole  to  the  stirring  up  of  revival  pro- 
cesses in  the  kinassthetic  centres.  The  distinction  be- 
tween sensory  and  motor  consciousness  is  largely  logical ; 
all  consciousness  is  both.  Every  sensation  reverberates 
outwards  in  the  muscles,  and  this  muscular  resonance 
reacts  back  upon  the  sensory  factor.  But  it  is  clear  that 
the  largest  amount  of  the  motor  '  ingredient '  attaches  to 
the  most  intense  sensation. 

Now  we  also  know  that  the  exercise  of  attention  involves 
a  large  amount  of  motor  process  ;  its  constant  and  necessary 
accompaniments  are  motor.  Consequently  the  rising  tide 
of  motor  incitation  due  to  the  rising  intensity  of  sensation, 
is  an  increasing  stimulus  to  the  attention,  by  a  radiation  of 
processes  in  the  centres  of  movement.  So  we  have  a  valid 
reason  for  the  general  fact  that  an  increase  of  intensity 
of  sensation  tends  to  draw  and  hold  the  attention. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  ordinary  opinion  is  true,  that 
the  idea  of  a  movement  is  already  the  beginning  of  that 
movement.  In  the  light  of  this  principle  it  is  easy  to  see 
that,  when  I  turn  my  attention  to  a  sensation,  I  in  so  far 
start  into  more  vigorous  existence  the  motor  ingredients 
and  associations  of  that  sensation.  This  in  turn  tends  to 
bring  out  more  intensely  the  sensory  ingredients,  and  so  the 
second  aspect  of  our  '  reasoning  in  a  circle '  is  made  clear ; 
i.e.,  that  attention  heightens  the  intensity  of  sensations.^ 

^  After  the  original  publication  of  the  article  containing  this  position, 
Professor  Hoffding,  in  a  private  letter,  called  my  attention  to  the  following 


I 


The  Development  of  Attention.  463 

This  process  of  radiation,  or  mutual  overflow,  among  the 
different  motor  centres  —  if  they  be  different  —  is  not 
hypothetical.  All  theories  demand  it.  It  is  simply  a  ques- 
tion, in  any  special  case,  as  to  how  far  the  circle  of  influ- 
ence of  one  motor  process  may  extend  to  neighbouring 
fibres  and  cells.  And  if  my  theory  be  true,  that  attention 
is  just  the  most  habitual  of  all  forms  of  motor  reaction  — 
because  extending  far  back  in  the  race  history  of  organic 
accommodation  —  then  the  direct  arousing  of  the  attention 
by  changes  in  mental  content  is  fully  explained  in  the  way 
I  suppose. 

To  put  the  matter  in  a  nutshell  —  just  in  as  far  as  the 
motor  ingredient  of  a  mental  content  of  any  kind  is  large, 
that  is,  in  as  far  as  the  sensory  ingredient  is  intense, 
just  to  this  degree  will  the  direction  of  the  attention  be 
secured,  and  to  this  degree  also  will  both  the  ingredients 
be  intensified  by  this  act  of  attention.  The  two  facts, 
therefore,  that  intensity  draws  attention,  and  attention 
increases  intensity,  may  be  stated  in  terms  of  a  single 
principle  which  I  venture  to  call,  in  view  of  the  doctrine 
of  association  already  explained,  the  '  law  of  sensori-motor 
association,'  i.e.,  every  mental  state  is  a  complex  of  sensory 
and  motor  elements,  and  any  hiflnence  wJiich  strengtliens 
the  one,  tejids  to  strengthen  the  other  also. 


quotation  from  his  Outlines  of  Psychology  (p.  316),  which  clearly  takes  the 
same  general  ground  aS  to  the  cause  of  heightened  intensities  when  attention 
is  aroused :  "  It  is  possible  that  impulses  return  from  the  centres  with  which 
the  voluntary  concentration  of  consciousness  is  linked,  to  the  centres  of 
sensuous  perception  (as  in  other  cases  to  motor  centres),  in  which  way  their 
effect  may  be  strengthened.  This  would  be  the  physiological  form  of  the 
psycholoqical  fact  that  an  idea  becomes  clearer  if  ive  give  ourselves  up  to 
picturing  itP  (Italics  mine.)  See  also  his  reference  to  Wundt  {Physiol. 
Psychologies  I  ,  pp.  233  f.). 


464  The  Origin  of  Attention, 

The  reflex  attention  which  follows  upon  increased  in- 
tensity of  sensory  excitation  may  be  considered,  therefore, 
in  conformity  with  what  has  already  been  said,  the  return 
wave  of  revived  motor  associates  ;  and  the  increased  in- 
tensity which  follows  the  direction  of  the  attention,  is  due 
to  the  direct  influence  of  this  return  wave,  by  the  reverse 
association.^ 

This  principle  also  goes  far  to  explain  the  relation  to 
each  other  of  the  two  so-called  laws  which  are  usually 
stated  independently  in  connection  with  reaction  times  : 
(i)  greater  intensity  of  stimulus  diminishes  the  reaction 
time,  and  (2)  motor  reactions  are  generally  shorter  than 
sensory.  Both  are  ready  deductions  from  the  'law  of 
sensori-motor  association.'  As  for  the  first  law,  that  more 
intense  stimulation  gives  a  shorter  reaction  than  less  in- 
tense, the  reason  of  it  is  now  evident.  It  is  because  the 
more  intense  stimulus  arouses  more  and  stronger  motor 
associates  ;  or,  put  physiologically,  because  it  has  greater 
dynamogenic  effect,  and  so  facilitates  motor  discharge,  both 
directly  into  the  reacting  muscles,  and  indirectly  by  its 
readier  influence  in  getting  the  attention. 

Now  as  for  the  second  fact,  which  holds  for  the  majority 
of  people,  its  explanation  also  follows.  Experiments  show 
that  the  reaction  time  is  shorter  when  the  signal  is  fore- 
known, and  the  attention  is  consequently  not  drawn  to  it, 

1  Wallaschek  {^Zeit.  fiir  FsycJiologie,  VII.,  heft  I,  March,  1894,  p.  67) 
criticises  my  view  on  the  ground  that  only  in  persons  of  the  motor  type 
—  of  speech,  for  example  —  would  there  be  the  necessary  'motor  associates.' 
But  this  is  the  reverse  mistake  to  that  made  by  Fere,  noticed  above,  who  says 
that  the  law  of  dynamogenesis  makes  it  necessary  that  all  should  be  'motors' 
in  type  (cf.  footnote  on  p.  436,  above).  Both  fail  to  distinguish  between  the 
general  dynamogenic  influence  of  a  stimulus,  which,  by  the  law  of  'sensori- 
motor association,'  implicates  the  attention,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  kines- 
thetic motor  images  of  memory,  which  represent  particular  movements. 


The  Development  of  Attention.  465 

but  is  left  free  to  seek  some  further  facilitating  cue.  This 
cue  is  found,  of  course,  in  persons  accustomed  to  depend 
upon  their  motor  memories  for  various  voluntary  actions, 
in  the  thoughts  of  the  movements  actually  to  be  made  in 
reacting.  And  so  the  ^  motor  reaction'  is  directly  prepared 
for.  In  these  cases,  a  particular  kind  of  motor  associa- 
tion is  emphasized  by  the  direct  act  of  attention.  The 
motor  associates  are  pictured,  dwelt  upon,  emphasized 
beforehand,  the  motor  centres  are  put  into  a  state  of  high 
potential,  the  stimulus  is  left  to  discriminate  itself  without 
attention  —  and  thus  the  reaction  time  is  shortened.  It  is 
evident  that  in  the  sensory  reaction,  part,  at  least,  of  the 
dynamogenic  influence  of  the  stimulus  goes  with  the  atten- 
tion, for  the  discrimination  of  the  signal,  etc.  ;  while,  in 
the  motor  reaction,  it  all  goes  into  the  reaction,  which  is 
already  prepared  for  by  motor  attention. ^ 

It  is  an  evident  corollary,  also,  that  only  in  persons  of 
the  motor  type  would  the  motor  reaction  be  shorter  than 
the  sensory ;  for  it  supposes  a  ready  habit  of  using  motor 
memories  mainly  in  voluntary  movement.  Persons  trained, 
however,  to  use  auditory  and  visual  memories  as  the  in- 
strument of  attention,  find  their  reaction  time  lengthened  ^ 


1  It  is  only  what  we  would  expect  that,  when  the  stimulus  (signal)  is  not 
intense  enough  to  carry  its  own  discrimination,  either  the  reaction  takes  place 
upon  a  false  stimulus,  or  the  attention  shifts  from  the  movement,  and  the  time 
is  lengthened. 

2  Cases  in  which  the  sensory  time  was  shorter  than  the  motor  have,  in  fact, 
been  reported  by  Cattell  {Phil.  Stud.,  VIII.,  1892,  p.  403),  Flournoy  {Arch, 
des  Sci.  Psy.,  1892,  No.  10,  quoted  in  Rev.  Philos.,  April,  1893,  p.  444),  and 
Baldwin  {Medical  Pecord,  April  15,  1893,  p.  455).  The  explanation  given  in 
the  text  was  proposed  independently  by  Flournoy  and  myself  in  the  papers 
cited.  See  my  proposed  report  of  results,  with  discussion  of  those  of  Cattell 
and  Flournoy,  in  The  Psychological  Review,  II.,  1895  C  Studies  from  the 
Princeton  Laboratory'). 

2  H 


466  The  Origin  of  Attention. 

when  they  come  to  pay  close  attention  to  the  movements 
which  they  are  about  to  make. 

Applying  this  thought  to  the  rise  of  speech  and  its 
method,  we  find  abundant  reason  for  the  variety  of  types 
found  among  adults.  Visual,  auditory,  and  motor  memo- 
ries of  words  date  back  to  early  childhood,  and  do  not 
arise  synchronously.  Visual  pictures  of  figure  arise  and 
get  comparatively  fixed  in  childhood  some  months  before 
the  child  begins  to  speak  or  write,  as  is  shown  by  its  rec- 
ognition of  simple  figures,  animals,  and  later,  letters.  Its 
auditory  images,  however,  date  back  still  farther ;  this  is 
seen  in  the  very  early  recognition  of  words  heard.  Special 
motor  memories,  on  the  contrary,  are  the  latest  of  all. 
The  ability  to  trace  outlines  which  have  been  already 
recognized,^  arises  only  after  considerable  progress  has 
been  made  in  speaking,  and  the  progress  in  speaking  is,  in 
turn,  relatively  much  later  in  its  rise  than  visual  and  audi- 
tory recognition.  So  the  probable  order  in  which  these 
different  elements  of  the  speech  faculty  would  come  under 
the  jurisdiction  of  the  Maw  of  sensori-motor  association' 
is  about  this  :  auditory,  visual,  speech-motor,  hand-motor 
(writing)  memories.  And  a  similar  genetic  analysis  might 
be  made  out  for  other  complex  activities,  if  the  facts  were 
carefully  observed. 

This  means  that  auditory  and  visual  memories  get  a  good 
'start*  on  the  other  varieties  in  the  genetic  process.  They 
acquire  considerable  influence  over  the  attention,  which  is 
largely  reflex  at  that  early  period,  and  they  become  in  turn 
relatively  easy  of  revival,  before  the  specific  motor  memo- 
ries are  well  begun.  Here  is  sufficient  reason  for  the 
existence   of   auditory   and  visual    speech    types.      Habits 

1  What  I  have  called  'tracery  imitation  '  above,  Chap.  V.,  §  I. 


The  Dcvclopincnt  of  Attention.  467 

thus  arise  which,  on  the  mental  side,  express  the  readiest 
sensori-motor  associations.  They  amount  to  what  some 
have  called  *pre-perceptions,'  or  better,  perhaps,  'pre-ap- 
perceptions.'  On  the  physical  side  these  habits  represent 
preferential  dynamic  tensions  among  those  paths  of  dis- 
charge whose  functions  merge,  in  common,  in  that  of  the 
attention.  The  law  signalized  above  tends,  of  course,  as 
life  advances,  to  consolidate  these  particular  sensori-motor 
couples  ;  and  so  one  particular  kind  of  attention  becomes  a 
permanent  trait  of  the  mental  life,  unless  the  other  con- 
nections, which  are  subsequently  brought  into  use,  be  of 
sufficient  strength  to  supersede  that  originally  most  used. 
This  latter,  however,  may  happen  in  any  of  several  in- 
stances :  either  from  inherited  tendency,  or  from  the 
strength  of  other  motor  habits ;  or,  in  course  of  time, 
by  dint  of  continued  practice  in  one  selected  kind  of 
attention. 

It  would  seem,  accordingly,  that  the  '  auditory  speech  ' 
type  should  be  found  most  frequently  among  unliterary 
people,  and  among  those  who  have  not  had  extended 
linguistic  training,  or  large  practice  in  writing  and  read- 
ing. The  particular  influences  which  are  lacking  in  this 
type  are  present  in  the  training  which  the  attention  gets 
in  people  of  the  *  motor  type.'  ^ 

We  have  now  reached,  by  the  psychological  and  genetic 
analysis  of  speech,  a  result  which,  it  is  evident,  confirms 
our  general  theory  of  attention.  The  law  of  *  sensori- 
motor association  '  is  a  generalization  on  the  side  of  con- 
sciousness, from  particular  cases  of  dynamogcnesis,  each  of 
which  shows,  on  the  nervous  side,  the  working  of  the  law  of 

1  The  important  educational  applications  of  this  topic  are  reserved  for  my 
later  volume. 


468  The  Origin  of  Attention. 

*  selection.'  It  is  just  by  and  for  this,  as  we  have  seen,  that 
attention  has  developed.  It  is  a  reaction  of  motor  character 
upon  sense  qualities  and  mental  contents  generally,  vary- 
ing in  its  degree  of  ease  and  effectiveness,  according  to 
the  amount  of  habit  and  structural  growth.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  law  of  '  selection  '  is,  if  my  exposition  be  true, 
a  generalization  of  the  nervous  process  by  which  each  of 
such  habits  gets  started,  as  representing  a  new  accommo- 
dation of  the  arganism  to  its  stimulations. 

Closer  observation  of  states  of  attention  also  leads  us 
to  note  some  more  facts  and  their  explanations.  We  find 
on  examining  consciousness,  that  attention  is  not  a  fixed 
thing,  a  faculty,  any  more  than  are  memory  or  imagina- 
tion. Yet  in  much  of  the  literature  of  late  years,  in  which 
the  '  faculties '  have  been  scouted,  I  know  of  no  author 
who  has  applied  his  own  criticisms  consistently  to  the  at- 
tention. Attention  is  still  treated  as  a  constant  quan- 
tity, a  fixed  thing,  the  same  for  all  the  exercises  of  it, 
and  for  all  the  contents  to  which  it  gives  its  reaction. 
Memory,  on  the  contrary,  is  now  known  to  be  a  func- 
tion of  the  content  remembered  ;  and  not  a  faculty  which 
takes  up  the  content  and  remembers  it.  So  we  have 
no  longer  one  memory,  but  many  :  visual,  auditory,  motor 
memories.  Yet  the  very  same  thing  is  true  of  attention  ; 
we  have  not  one  attention^  but  many.  Attention  is  a 
function  of  content  ;  and  it  is  only  as  different  contents 
attended  to,  overlap  and  repeat  one  another,  that  they 
have  somewhat  the  same  function  of  attention. 

It  is  easy  to  see,  however,  why  it  is  that  attention  has 
been  left  largely  untouched  in  the  recent  reduction  of 
mental  functions  to  changes  in  content.  It  is  for  just  the 
same  reason  that  the  notion  of  self  has  been  left  over  by 


1 


The  DevclopDiciit  of  Attention.  469 

criticism  likewise,  as  I  showed  in  part  above. ^  The  reason 
is  a  genetic  one.  It  is  evident  that  here,  as  in  many  other 
cases,  we  have  to  note  the  tendency  of  many  sensory 
stimulations  to  discharge  themselves  through  common 
motor  channels.  The  contrast  between  pleasure  and  pain 
tends,  of  course,  to  make  a  great  line  of  division  between 
the  motor  associates  of  some  contents  and  those  of  others  ; 
such  as  that  between  reaching  and  withdrawing  move- 
ments. As  the  senses  develop,  further  divisions  arise. 
But  it  nevertheless  remains  true  that  a  balance  of  motor 
contraction,  reverberation,  effort,  is  common  to  all  con- 
tents, and  so  becomes  part  of  the  fixed  expression  of  all 
definite  states  of  consciousness.  This  fixed  grouping  of 
muscular  elements  is,  in  its  reaction  upon  the  content 
which  arouses  it,  the  fixed  element  in  attention  (certain 
tensions  of  brow,  jaws,  skin  of  head,  etc., — the  yi  element 
in  the  formula  given  above  for  attention  2) ;  and  this  makes 
attention  seem  to  be  a  faculty  of  constant  value.  So  it  is 
that  certain  organic  and  muscular  feelings  contribute  a 
certain  sameness  of  value  to  the  sense  of  self. 

But  this  is  not  all.  The  actual  content  of  attention 
feeling  is  more  thaji  half  different  from  sense  to  sense.  We 
have  —  i.e.,  I  have  —  a  content  so  different  when  I  attend 
to  a  sound  from  that  when  I  attend  to  a  light,  that  it  is 
with  the  greatest  difficulty  that  I  find  any  strains  or 
stresses  in  head,  body,  or  limb  quite  the  same  in  the  two. 
And  when  we  come  to  the  difference  between  attention 
to  any  such  sense  content  and  attention  to  an  ideal  con- 

1  See  above,  Chap.  XI.,  §  3.  The  recent  chapter  of  Bradley  {Appear- 
ance and  Reality,  Chap.  IX.)  is  a  remarkable  exception  to  this  charge, 
however. 

2  Chap.  X.,  §  3,  p.  313. 


470  The  Origin  of  Attention. 

tent,  —  even  though  the  latter  be  the  memory  of  the  very 
same  sense-thing,  —  the  whole  feeling  of  attention  is  again 
extraordinarily  changed.  In  all  these  cases  the  content 
felt  as  attention  is  motor  ;  but  it  is  yet  as  varied  as  all  the 
other  habitually  varied  motor  responses  which  have  been 
found  useful  in  the  race  history  of  the  organism.  Its  vari- 
able elements  are  the  a  values  of  our  formula. 

Very  cursory  observation  of  certain  animals  shows  these 
facts  in  forms  fixed  by  their  varied  habits  of  life.  One 
has  only  to  ride  an  intelligent  horse  regularly  to  be  con- 
vinced not  only  that  most  of  his  mental  processes  are 
conducted  through  his  ears,  —  an  effect  exaggerated,  per- 
haps, by  the  '  blinders '  which  are  put  over  horses'  eyes 
when  in  harness, — but  also  that  his  attention  is  auditory. 
He  shows  his  hopes,  fears,  expectations,  curiosities,  etc., 
by  ear  movements.  In  the  rabbit  and  other  animals  in 
whom  the  olfactory  lobes  are  largely  developed  for  pur- 
poses of  utility,  a  distinct  type  of  memory  and  attention 
is  probably  developed  in  connection  with  smell,  an  olfac- 
tory type.  The  constant  movements  of  the  tip  of  the 
snout  in  many  such  animals  when  exploring  for  food,  etc., 
by  smell,  shows  the  development  of  delicate  smell-motor 
reflexes  analogous  to  our  eye-motor  reflexes  and  the  horse's 
ear-motor.  Attention  in  these  cases  is  probably  reactive 
largely,  but  for  that  reason  its  direct  connection  with  one 
sense  is  all  the  more  simple  and  striking. 

Cases  from  pathology,  also,  show  the  actual  dependence 
often  of  a  particular  motor  function  upon  the  single  sense 
which  trained  the  attention  in  the  learning  of  this  action. 
Bastian  ^  quotes  the  case  of  an  aphasia  patient,  who  spelt 
aloud  a  word  wrongly  when  he  wrote  it  {candd  for  cat),  but 

1  Brain  as  Organ  of  Mind,  pp.  60-62. 


The  Development  of  Attention.  471 

at  the  same  time,  pronounced  it  correctly,  as  he  heard  it. 
This  means  that  his  spelHng  movements,  letter  by  letter, 
had  been  learned  in  association  with  the  making  of  the 
letters  and  the  sight  of  them,  while  the  learning  of  the  word 
pronunciation,  as  a  whole,  has  been  in  connection  with  its 
sound. 

But  further  still,  in  the  same  line.  I  do  not  think  that 
we  ever  —  even  in  successive  attentions  to  the  very  same 
thing  under  the  most  uniform  conditions  —  have  exactly 
the  same  attention  feeling  twice.  Why  should  not  atten- 
tion, like  everything  else,  be  subject  to  the  changing 
effects  of  habit  and  accommodation }  Indeed,  it  is  the 
very  outcome  and  exponent  of  these  principles,  as  I 
have  just  been  arguing.  And  then,  too,  dynamogen- 
esis,  the  basis  of  all  the  excess  energies  which  are  crys- 
tallized into  habits,  still  works  on,  and  is  working  on  in 
every  attentive  reaction  which  we  make.  For  all  these 
reasons,  we  see  that  no  two  acts  of  attention  can  be  just 
the  same.^  And  the  variable  element  is  the  a  of  our 
formula. 

One  additional  point  may  be  noted  here  merely ;  it  gets 
enforcement  in  the  following  chapters.  We  would  expect 
this  change  in  motor  reaction  content,  from  act  to  act  of 
attention,  to  have  some  equivalent  in  consciousness  ;  some 
equivalent  apart  from  change  in  the  particular  content  itself 
which  stimulates  the  attention  —  some  generalized,  vague, 
unanalyzable  feelings.  And  so  we  have  found.  Recognition 
is  one  such  feeling,  and  Belief  is  another.  I  have  argued 
independently  over  them   both  —  apart    from  the  genetic 

1  I  think  it  would  not  be  difficult  to  test  this  theory  of  attention  by  the 
dynamogenic  method  of  experiment  suggested  by  Miinsterberg,  The  Psycho- 
logical Review,  1894,  441  fF. 


472  The  Origin  of  Attention. 

aspect  of  the  case  —  and  found  them  to  be  just  this  — 
felt  attitudes  toward  particular  contents. ^ 

§  4.     Voluntary  Acquisition  and  Control. 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  see  that  voluntary  move- 
ment has  three  distinct  stages  of  development  in  each 
individual.  We  find  the  mind  at  first  occupied  with  an 
objecty  presentation,  or  stimulus,  which  starts  a  muscular 
reaction,  either  native,  acquired,  or  at  random.  Then  a 
little  later  we  find  the  mind  occupied  with  -Bl  presentation  or 
idea  of  the  moveiuent  thus  made,  which,  with  its  associates, 
tends  to  stimulate  the  corresponding  motor  processes,  and 
thus  to  brinsf  about  the  same  movement.     And  at  last  we 

o 

find  the  mind  occupied  with  an  object  again,  for  the  attain- 
ment of  which  the  movement  is  a  necessary  but  now  a 
subconscious  means. 

The  original  '  end '  of  volition,  therefore,  is  simply  the 
image  or  picture  which  starts  the  imitative  reaction.  Sug- 
gestion turns  out  to  be  an  original  motor  stimulus  in  voli- 
tion, as  truly  as  in  the  lower  activities.  The  child  attempts 
to  speak,  for  example,  with  no  attention  to  his  organs  of 

1  Chap.  X.,  §  3.  On  Belief,  see  my  Handbook,  II.,  Chap.  VII. ;  the 
genetic  theory  of  belief  is  reserved  for  the  later  volume  of  '  Interpretations.' 
The  doctrine  of  Recognition,  based  on  the  law  of  '  sensori-motor  association,' 
was  published  in  the  Philos.  Review,  July,  1893.  Professor  Hoffding,  in  a  pri- 
vate communication,  makes  the  criticism  that,  on  my  view,  we  would  con- 
fuse two  qualities  which  had  been  repeated  the  same  number  of  times.  This 
would  mean  that  we  have  no  differences  of  attention  for  the  different  sense 
qualities.  But  it  is  evident  that  that  is  not  true,  if  I  am  right  in  saying  that 
the  actual  motor  content  is  different  for  each  quality,  and  that  we  so  have 
different  attentioiis.,  just  as  we  have  different  memories,  etc.  His  criticism 
shows  —  what  I  said  above  —  that  even  the  best  psychologists  still  look  upon 
attention  as  a  relatively  fixed  '  faculty,'  rather  than  as  a  shifting  function  of 
content. 


Vohmtary  Acquisitioii  and  Coulrol.        473 

speech.  He  then  learns  that  it  is  by  muscular  effort,  by 
persistent  imitation,  that  he  must  proceed.  Accordingly, 
the  muscular  movement  now  becomes  his  end.  He  strains 
to  set  his  vocal  organs  properly.  His  efforts  to  control  the 
organs,  however,  throw  him,  at  first,  into  great  confusion 
and  failure.  But  after  more  muscular  control  is  acquired, 
the  third  stage  gradually  follows,  as  the  movements  become 
habitual.  The  end  is  now  again  a  picture  or  object,  and 
the  muscular  consciousness  falls  into  the  background,  as, 
for  example,  in  our  developed  adult  speech,  when  we  think 
only  of  the  ideas  which  we  wish  to  express. 

The  theory  of  motor  development  now  worked  out 
throws  much  light  also  on  the  whole  vexed  question  of 
muscular  control  —  the  regulation  of  movement  in  amount 
and  direction,  and  its  suppression,  etc.  It  is  easy  to  see 
that  the  material  of  volition,  the  ideas  or  copies  attended 
to  and  imitated,  are  the  means  of  holding  the  course  of 
each  movement  in  check  by  association.  I  can  repeat  a 
movement  only  because  I  am  able  to  reinstate  in  memory, 
the  feeling  of  it,  the  copy  elements  of  it.  But  by  asso- 
ciation, as  we  have  seen,  other  elements,  such  as  visual, 
or  auditory,  or  touch,  memories,  may  stand  for  the  mus- 
cular memories.  The  whole  management  of  a  movement, 
therefore,  depends  upon  the  getting  hold  by  the  attention 
of  the  series  of  positions  desired  for  the  limb  moved,  and 
this  can  be  done  only  by  filling  up  the  attention  with  the 
proper  copy  elements  of  sight,  hearing,  or  other,  which 
release  the  proper  series  of  motor  discharges,  and  these 
discharges  only.  And  negative  control,  or  inhibition,  rep- 
resents, in  general,  the  limitations  which  old  organic  ways 
of  action  impose  upon  new  ways  :  the  new  must  conform, 
if  possible,  to  old  organic  *  copy.* 


474  ^^^^  Origin  of  Attention. 

The  current  theory  of  *  control '  lends  itself  directly  to 
this  view,  hinging,  as  it  does,  upon  the  matching,  term  by 
term,  of  the  movements  being  accomplished  with  a  re- 
membered series,  whether  of  sight,  sound,  or  what  not. 
The  control  of  handwriting  described  above  is  a  good 
instance.^  The  current  theory,  however,  lacks  all  account 
of  the  process  by  which  the  series  to  be  matched  is  vividly 
held  up  for  voluntary  imitation. 

This  lack  we  are  now  able  to  supply.  The  view  of  atten- 
tion given  in  what  precedes,  teaches  us  that  the  motor 
reaction  of  attention  is  a  function  of  the  content  attended 
to,  on  the  one  hand ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  a  part  of 
the  motor  process  in  which  the  whole  content  finds  its 
dynamogenic  expression.  The  office  of  attention,  there- 
fore, is  that  of  fixing  the  content  steadily,  on  the  sensory 
side,  and  at  the  same  time  of  releasing  the  associated 
discharge  movements,  on  the  motor  side.  Attention  has,  in 
each  case,  as  we  have  seen,  grown  uj)  in  exactly  this  way, 
both  as  an  expression  of  motor  reverberation  from  typical 
and  constant  accommodations,  and  also  as  itself  the  very 
beginning,  by  the  law  of  '  excess,'  of  the  useful  discharges 
which,  in  their  acquisition,  got  to  be  associated  with  the 
content  in  question.  ) 

Attention  is  the  go-between  between  the  copy  imi- 
tated, and  the  imitation  which  copies  it.  It  is,  therefore, 
the  central  and  essential  fact  in  all  voluntary  muscular 
control.  I 

This  theory  is  so  important  in  the  sequel,  and  so  instruc- 
tive in  its  applications,  that  I  take  space  for  its  summary 
statement  here.  Its  development  is  not  necessary  to  the 
clear  statement  of  our  general  evolution  theory.     I  shall 

1  Above,  Chap.  V.,  §  2. 


Vohiutary  Acquisition  and  Control.        475 

accordingly  return  to  it  in  detail  in  the  later  volume,  which 
deals  with  applications  and  inferences.^ 

1  I  intimated  this  theory  of  control  in  my  article  in  the  Philosophical  Re- 
vieiv,  II.,  p.  406,  from  which  I  may  quote  :  "  The  correlation  of  various 
images  in  the  attention,  through  their  respective  *  motor  ingredients,'  is 
necessary  for  voluntary  activity;  and  where  a  particular  class  of  images  is 
lost,  the  damage  it  works  in  the  mental  life  is  not  alone  the  narrowing  of  the 
content  of  consciousness,  but  it  is  in  many  cases  the  withdrawing  of  that  sup- 
port, without  which  the  voluntary  function  can  not  proceed  at  all.  It  is  the 
coordination  of  the  attention,  therefore,  —  what  I  have  elsewhere  called 
'  volitional  apperception,'  —  that  every  one  of  the  incoming  sensory  elements 
must  have  part,  at  least,  of  its  regulating  effect  upon  the  efferent  discharge. 
This  is  shown  so  clearly,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  in  the  elaborate  article  by  Pick 
on  the  loss  of  voluntary  movement  by  certain  anaesthetics  when  the  eyes  or 
ears  are  closed  {^Die  sogenawite '  conscience  inusculaire^  Zeitsch.  fUr  Psych.,  IV., 
1892,  161  ff.),  that  I  need  not  do  more  than  recognize  the  support  which  my 
article  gets  from  his.  A  collection  of  cases  which  show  the  extreme  depend- 
ence of  attention  and  voluntary  movement,  in  persons  of  the  visual  type,  upon 
vision,  is  made  by  Dr.  Ireland  in  Journal  of  Alent.  Sci.,  January,  1893,  pp. 
130  f." 


CHAPTER   XVI. 

Summary:    Final   Statement   of   Habit   and 
Accommodation. 

§  I.    Stimmary  of  Theory  of  Development} 

After  the  foregoing  detailed  statements  of  the  facts  of 
development,  and  the  solution  of  certain  particular  genetic 
problems,  we  may  come  to  a  general  synthesis.  What  is 
the  least  that  we  can  say  about  an  organism's  develop- 
ment.'* Everybody  admits  that  two  things  must  be  said: 
first,  it  develops  by  getting  habits  formed  ;  and  second,  it 
develops  by  getting  new  adaptations  which  involve  the 
breaking  up  or  modification  of  habits — this  latter  being 
called  accoi}nnodatio7is. 

The  law  of  habit  may  now  be  stated  generally  in  some 
such  way  as  this  :  Habit  is  the  tejtdency  of  an  organism  to 
continue  more  and  more  readily  processes  which  ai^e  vitally 
beneficial. 

This  principle  we  have  found  an  axiom  in  biology 
and  psychology.  In  psychology  great  instances  of  it  are 
readily  cited  —  instinct,  emotional  expression,  the  perform- 
ance of  movements  pictured  in  the  attention,  even  atten- 
tion itself.     In  order  to  habit,  it  has  become  evident,  the 

1  This  section  is  not  intended  as  a  resume  of  the  book  and  should  not  be 
considered  so,  but  only  of  those  points  which  are  needed  for  the  remaining 
sections  of  this  chapter. 

476 


Suuiniary  of  Theory  of  Dcvelop77icnt.      477 

organism  must  have  contractility  —  ability  to  make  a  re- 
sponse in  movement  to  a  stimulus  —  and  then  it  must 
have  some  incentive  to  make  and  keep  making  the  7'igJit  kind 
of  movcnicnt.  The  essential  thing  about  habit,  then,  is 
this  :  tJie  maintenance  of  advantageous  stimulations  by  the 
oiganisnt  s  own  movements.  Now  what  is  the  incentive  to 
the  right  kind  of  movement  ?  This  question  carries  us 
farther. 

Three  answers  are  possible.  The  only  incentive  may  be 
the  actual  stimulus,  altogether  outside  the  organism,  and 
the  right  movement  may  be  only  a  chance  selection  from 
many  random  movements.  This  is  the  ordinary  biological 
theory.  The  stimulus  is  supposed  to  '  come  along '  very 
often,  and,  moreover,  to  be  very  varied  in  its  kind,  locality, 
etc. ;  so  that  by  repeating  happy  chance  movements,  habits 
are  formed,  and  by  compounding  the  habits,  these  habits 
become  complex  and  varied.  So  the  creature  develops. 
On  this  view  development  is  entirely  an  expression  of  the 
one  principle  of  Nervous  Habit. 

The  second  answer  says  :  the  incentive  is  in  part,  as 
before,  outside  the  organism,  that  is,  the  external  stimulus 
must  remain  constant ;  but  the  organism,  after  the  first 
reaction  to  the  stimulus,  tends  to  repeat  its  lucky  reactions 
again.  This  is  the  psychological  theory.  It  finds  in  this 
tendency  to  repeat  lucky  movements  the  nervous  analogue 
of  pleasure,  and  makes  it  with  the  principle  of  excess 
discha7ge,  following  upon  pleasure,  the  additional  thing. 
There  is  thus  an  internal  organic  'incentive.'  By  this  the 
creature  'goes  out,'  and  secures  its  own  repetitions  or 
avoidances,  but  only  after  lucky  chance  adaptations.  This 
I  have  designated  —  in  the  only  form  in  which  it  has  been 
held  —  the  Spencer-Bain  theory. 


47^  Habit  and  Accommodatio7i. 

But  this  latter  theory,  superior  as  it  is  to  the  purely 
biological  or  *  repetition  '  view  of  the  biologists,  has  had  in 
its  statement  a  radical  defect,  the  intimations  of  Darwin  — 
who  nowhere,  to  my  knowledge,  fully  expresses  an  opinion 
—  alone  excepted.  It  has  held,  in  Spencer  and  Bain,  that 
the  pleasure  or  pain  process  is  a  reflex  of  the  reacting 
movement.  This,  I  have  argued  above  in  detail,  cannot  be 
the  case ;  for  movements  themselves  reflect  pleasure  or 
pain  only  as  they  serve  as  stimuli,  reproduce  stimuli,  or  arc 
associated  with  stimuli.  On  the  contrary,  the  stimuli  as 
suck  are  the  agents  of  good  or  ill,  pleasure  or  pain  ;  and 
this  pleasure  or  pain  process  —  index,  as  it  is,  of  the  fun- 
damental vital  processes  —  dictates  the  very  first  adapted 
move7nent  tozvard  or  away  from  certain  kinds  of  stinuda- 
tions.  This  is  the  third  answer  and  the  valid  one.  Other- 
wise the  principle  of  excess  —  as  in  the  form  of  the  '  height- 
ened nervous  wave'  of  Spencer  —  only  serves  to  confirm 
in  habits  the  lucky  adaptations  already  hit  upon. 

How  shall  we  further  conceive  the  process  whereby,  from 
many  movements  thus  generally  adapted,  some  are  selected 
as  special  adaptations,  or  particular  motor  functions.^  This, 
it  is  clear,  is  the  question  of  Accommodation.  It  occurs  by 
means  of  excess  reactions.  It  is  opposed  to  Habit  in  two 
ways  :  first,  it  has  reference  to  new  movements,  —  a  pro- 
spective reference, —  while  habit  has  reference  always  to 
movements  more  or  less  old,  a  retrospective  reference, — 
and  so  it  runs  ahead  of  habit ;  and  second,  it  tends,  by  the 
selection  of  new  movements,  to  come  into  direct  conflict 
with  old  habitual  movements,  and  so  to  disintegrate  habits. 
Let  us  look,  then,  at  accommodation  also  more  closely, 
gathering  up  what  has  gone  before  in  earlier  chapters. 

In  general  formula :  Accommodation  is  tJie  principle  by 


Summary  of  Theory  of  Development.       479 

ivJiicJi  an  organism  comes  to  adapt  itself  to  more  complex  con- 
ditions of  stimulation  by  perfoi'ming  more  complex  functions} 

Various  functions  have  been  shown  in  what  proceeds  to 
illustrate  this  principle  ;  all  functions  which  the  individual 
has  leai'ned.  Learning  to  act  is  just  accommodation,  noth- 
ing more  nor  less.  Speech,  tracery,  handwriting,  piano- 
playing,  all  motor  acquisitions,  are  what  accommodation 
is,  i.e.,  adaptations  to  more  complex  conditions.  The 
common  thing  about  them  all  is  evident  from  the  fore- 
going statement  of  the  requirements  of  development :  the 
7naintenance  of  stiinnlus  by  the  excessive  motor  discharge 
which  it  stirs  up.  This  is  Imitation.  In  brief,  any  reaction 
whatever,  no  matter  how  produced,  —  by  accident,  by  sug- 
gestion, by  obedience,  by  volition,  by  effort,  under  stress 
of  pain  or  excitement  of  pleasure, — any  reaction  by  which 
a  useful  stimulus  is  hailed  back  and  enjoyed,  or  a  dam- 
aging one  fled  from  and  escaped,  —  any  such  is  a  case  of 
accommodation,  and  falls  under  the  theory  of  imitation 
now  expounded. 

But  continued  accommodation  is  possible  only  because 
the  other  principle,  Jiabit^  all  the  time  conserves  the  past 
and  gives  points  d'apptn  in  solidified  structure  for  new 
accommodations.  Inasmuch,  further,  as  the  copy  becomes, 
by  transference  from  the  world  to  the  mind,  capable  of  in- 
ternal revival,  in  memory,  accommodation  takes  on  a  new 
character  —  a  conscious,  subjective  character  —  in  Volition. 
Volition  arises  as  a  phenomenon  of  'persistent  imitative 
suggestion,'  as  I  have  argued.  That  is,  volition  arises 
when  a  copy  remembered  vibrates  with  other  copies  re- 
membered or  presented,  and  when  all  the  connections,  in 

1  Compare  with  these  statements  of  Habit  and  Accommodation,  those  given 
above,  pp.  216,  217. 


480  Habit  and  Acconimodatio7i. 

thought  and  action,  of  all  of  them,  are  together  set  in  mo- 
tion incipiently.  The  residue  of  motive  is  connected  with 
what  we  call  attention,  and  the  final  co-ordination  of  all  the 
motor  elements  involved,  is  volition,  or  choice.  The  phys- 
ical basis  of  memory,  association,  thought,  is,  therefore, 
that  of  will  also  —  the  cerebrum,  —  and  pathological  cases 
show  clearly  that  aboulia  is  fundamentally  a  defect  of  syn- 
thesis in  perception  and  memory,  arising  from  one  or  more 
breaks  in  the  copy  system  whose  rise  I  have  sketched  in 
what  precedes. 

§  2.    htteraction  of  Hahit  and  Accommodation. 

We  have  seen  —  to  proceed  farther  on  our  way  —  that 
there  is  one  type  of  reaction,  and  only  one,  to  which  these 
two  principles  have  a  common  application  :  reactions  whose 
issue  tends  to  remstate  the  very  stinudus  whicJi  started  the 
reaction.  Accommodation  is  there,  in  such  a  reaction,  since 
the  advantageous  stimulation  stands  a  better  chance  of 
repetition  if  the  organism  tends  thus  to  get  it ;  but  since 
this  repeated  stimulus  again  stimulates  to  action,  and 
action  again  follows  —  there  also  is  habit.  So  accommo- 
dation, by  the  very  reaction  which  accommodates,  hands 
over  its  gains  immediately  to  the  rule  of  habit.  And  this 
is  the  universal  rule. 

How  true,  as  a  fact,  this  form  of  adaptation  is !  A 
fact  often  noticed,  always  admired,  never  explained  — 
that  organisms  move  toward  the  source  of  light  and  heat 
and  colour !  How  can  an  organism  get  such  a  splendid 
property  —  that  of  being  so  modified  by  what  is  good  for 
it,  that  it  itself  responds  in  a  way  to  get  it  again,  and, 
then,  by  thus  getting  it  again,  makes  its  future  enjoyments 


Organ ic   Cc^itralizatioii.  481 

of  it  sure  and  easy  ?  This  I  have  given  theories  to  ex- 
plain :  by  the  law  of  *  Excess '  the  stimulus  is  got  again, 
and  by  the  law  of  *  Sensori-motor  association '  the  process 
is  fixed  in  easy  habit. 

The  interaction  of  these  two  principles,  Accommodation 
and  Habit,  —  Excess  and  Association,  —  gives  rise  to  a 
two-fold  factor  in  every  organic  activity  of  whatever  kind. 
In  organisms  of  any  development  —  where  a  nervous  sys- 
tem, say,  is  present, — the  environment  being  a  changing 
one,  every  structure,  with  its  function,  represents  a  habit 
which  is  being  constantly  modified  by  the  law  of  accommo- 
dation. But  these  modifications  themselves,  as  we  have 
seen,  provide  again  for  their  own  habituation  ;  so  there  is 
a  constant  erosion,  and  a  constant  accretion,  to  the  net 
attainment  of  the  organism.  And  each  function  can  be 
understood  only  in  the  light  of  both  the  influences  which 
have  contributed  to  it.  Impulse,  for  example,  is  two-fold ; 
instinct  is  two-fold  ;  attention  is  two-fold  ;  emotion  is  two- 
fold. Is  not  this  a  reconciliation  in  principle  of  the 
opposed  theories  of  these  functions,  one  saying  that  these 
great  organic  habits  came  only  by  composition,  and  the 
other  that  they  came  only  by  selection,  intelligent  or 
organic  t 

§  3-    Organic  Centralization, 

We  have  now  seen  how  great  habits  are  formed. 
Heredity  further  fixes  them,  and  at  the  same  time  renders 
them  more  prominent,  i.e.,  as  instincts,  by  erasing  the 
evidences  of  their  origin,  and  abbreviating  the  phylo- 
genetic  process  in  the  growth  of  the  individual.  I  use  the 
phrase  'organic  centralization'  to  denote  this  great  out- 
come of  development,  —  the  differentiation  of  functions 
2  I 


482  Habit  and  Accommodation. 

by  lines  of  adaptation  which  run  apart,  as  far  as  their  par- 
ticular offices  and  structural  products  are  concerned,  but 
which  are  yet  centralized.  For  they  are  centralized  when 
considered  together,  as  constituting,  in  unity  and  plan,  the 
common  life  of  the  organism.  When  considered  each  for 
itself  also,  as  a  well-knit  whole  of  many  co-ordinated  units, 
the  same  centralization  is  shown  about  a  smaller  centre  ; 
such  as  the  movements  involved  in  a  particular  instinct, 
or  the  series  of  movements  of  the  facial  muscles  in  an 
*  expression.'  There  would  possibly  be  no  need  for  further 
exposition  of  this  point,  since  it  is  a  corollary  from  the 
general  theory  already  sketched,  were  it  not  that  it  has 
certain  applications. 

There  are  two  such  applications  which  are  new,  I  think, 
and  which  serve  to  gather  into  one  point  of  view  conflict- 
ing opinions  regarding  two  of  the  most  refractory  facts  in 
current  psychology.  I  refer  to  the  question  of  the  exist- 
ence of  special  nerves  for  pleasure  and  pain,  or  either ;  and 
to  the  attention. 

The  question  arises  :  If  accommodation  is  secured  by  a 
special  form  of  reaction  called  'excess,'  what  relation  does 
this  reaction  itself  sustain  to  the  principle  of  habit  ? 
Does  the  excess  function  itself  also  become  centralized  ? 
Does  it  tend  to  become  a  separate  co-ordinated  function, 
as  other  motor  discharges  do  } 

It  is  to  be  expected  that,  in  as  far  as  the  environment  in 
which  an  organism  lives  is  constant,  any  accommodation 
reaction  would,  taken  for  itself,  tend  to  become  a  habit. 
As  far  as  the  presumption  goes,  we  would  expect  to  find 
two  great  kinds  of  reaction  implicated  with  pleasure  and 
pain.  The  pain  reaction  would  tend  to  withdraw  the 
organism  from    the  stimulus  which    gives  pain  ;   and  the 


Organic  Ccnti^alization.  483 

pleasure  reaction  would  tend  to  bring  the  organism  into 
closer  relation  with  the  stimulus  which  gives  pleasure. 
These  two  kinds  of  reaction  would  be  possible  for  any 
muscular  group  whatever,  and  all  that  would  then  be 
required  would  be  some  sense  organ  which  would  distin- 
guish between  the  conditions  of  stimulation  which  regu- 
larly give  pleasure  —  reacting  to  them  with  the  forward 
moving  reaction,  —  and  those  which  regularly  give  pain  — 
reacting  to  them  with  the  withdrawing  movement.  This 
is  directly  confirmed  by  the  views  of  Meynert,  Richet, 
Miinsterberg,  and  Bain,  as  far  as  the  character  of  the 
movements  is  concerned  ;  and  by  the  results  of  Dessoir 
and  Goldscheider,  as  to  the  differentiation  of  the  sense  of 
pain.  It  then  becomes  a  matter  of  indifference  whether 
actual  pain  nerves  are  found  or  not,  in  connection  with  any 
particular  function.  That  depends  upon  what  the  race 
conditions  of  stimulation  have  actually  been.  If  the  pain 
stimulus  has  been  regular  and  peculiar  enough,  possibly  it 
has  got  itself  a  special  apparatus ;  research  must  decide. 
But  if  not,  then  not.  This  latter,  the  negative,  is  probably 
the  case  with  pleasure.  The  stimulus  to  pleasant  function 
is  so  general  and  normal,  that  pleasure  has  not  become 
well  *  centralized  '  either  in  the  organism,  or,  as  is  very 
plain,  in  consciousness.  Yet  in  the  special  case  in  which 
a  function  has  been  perpetual,  important,  and  uniform, 
there  we  do  find  pleasure  as  acute  and  definitely  localized 
as  pain  is,  i.e.,  in  the  sexual  function,  as  Nichols  has  pointed 
out.  It  is  not  at  all  improbable  that  this  function  has  a 
pleasure  nerve  apparatus.  So  it  is  possible  and  probable 
that  pain  is  both  a  sensation,  and  a  quale  or  '  tone'  of  other 
sensations,  emotions,  etc. ;  a  sensation,  —  if  it  has  developed 
its    own   apparatus  by  reacting  to    definite,  well-localized 


484  Habit  and  Accomfnodation. 

pain-giving  stimulations  constantly  enough  ;  a  quale,  — be- 
cause the  organism  is  never  completely  balanced  in  its 
environment,  and  the  stimulations  representing  misad- 
justment  and  pain  are  not  all  constant.  So  the  accommo- 
dation function  of  pain,  in  connection  with  all  possible 
stimulations,  must  go  on  just  the  same  whether  there  be  a 
sensation  pain  or  not ;  especially  in  the  sphere  of  thought, 
sentiment,  and  the  attentive  life,  since  this  is  the  latest, 
most  complex,  and  least  uniform  kind  of  accommodation. 

On  the  physical  side,  too,  the  matter  is  clear.  The 
excess  process  at  the  basis  of  pleasure  and  pain,  finds 
channels  of  outflow  which  serve  over  and  over  again  for 
the  reaction  required  to  repeat  the  pleasure,  or  stop  the 
pain.  The  same  connection  thus  serving  for  many  in- 
stances, becomes  well-worn  and  habitual ;  and  so  a  connec- 
tion is  formed  —  a  circuit  —  for  pleasure  or  pain,  like  the 
ordinary  sensori-motor  circuits.  If  light,  for  example,  con- 
sidered as  constant  stimulation,  serves  to  develop,  for  its 
different  intensities,  an  organ  —  the  eye, — and  certain 
nerves,  which  react  only  to  it,  as  hmiinoits ;  why  can  it  not 
also  develop,  in  connection  with  certain  of  its  intensities, 
a  further  organ  and  nerve  which  react  only  to  it  as  painfid? 
It  is,  indeed,  inevitable  that,  under  favourable  conditions, 
such  a  pain-apparatus  should  be  developed. 

This  recognizes  the  distinction  between  'pleasure  and 
pain '  on  one  side,  and  '  agreeableness  and  disagreeable- 
ness,'  on  the  other,  as  developed  by  Miinsterberg.  Pain 
as  sensation-content  is  distinct  from  pain  as  quale  of  other 
contents.  On  my  view,  this  is  a  distinction  due  to  develop- 
ment. Pain,  as  sensation,  is  pain  become  habitual  enough 
under  constancy  of  stimulation,  to  have  its  own  apparatus, 
i.e.y  it  is  pain  as  peripheral  function.     Pain,  on  the  other 


Organic  Centralization.  485 

hand,  as  quale  oi  mental  content  generally,  is  pain  of  irreg- 
ular stimulation,  or  pain  of  aceojfnnodation,  i.e.,  pain  as  ceji- 
tral  function.  I  do  not  agree,  therefore,  with  Miinsterberg, 
in  finding  in  the  movements  of  flexion  and  extension, 
which  my  theory  requires  in  common  with  his,  the  genetic 
sources  of  'agreeable'  or  'disagreeable'  tone.  The  whole 
theory  of  development,  as  I  have  shown  above,  if  it  is 
to  move  at  all,  requires  that  this  accommodation  pain  or 
pleasure  be  due,  in  the  first  instance,  to  stimulus,  and  that 
the  flexion  and  extension  movements  be  the  organic  mode 
of  accommodation  to  the  pleasure  or  pain-giving  stimulus. 
Nevertheless,  so  great  is  organic  complexity,  when  we 
come  to  take  the  principle  of  association  into  account, 
that,  after  all,  in  developed  organisms,  Miinsterberg  may 
be  right  in  making  the  flexion  and  extension  movements 
themselves  the  direct  basis  of  the  agreeable  and  disagree- 
able quale.  For  we  have  seen  in  the  case  of  emotion  that 
movements  at  first  purely  purposive,  serving  utility  or 
accommodation  to  stimulus,  themselves  get,  by  associa- 
tion, to  represent  the  degree  of  success  or  failure  in  accom- 
modation, and  so  come  themselves  to  give  body  to  the 
emotion.  In  like  manner,  these  flexion  and  extension 
movements  may  have  passed,  from  being  expressive  or 
utility  movements,  to  be  the  fore-runners  of  the  condition 
which  they  at  first  served  only  to  express.  And  it  may 
well  be  that  they  are  thus  an  intermediate  link  between 
quale  pleasure-pain,  and  sensation  pleasure-pain.  This 
is  supported  by  the  evidence  —  as  far  as  it  goes  —  which 
locates  the  nerve  apparatus  of  sensation  pleasure-pain 
in  the  muscles.  On  this  view,  it  is  for  reporting  flexion 
and  extension  movements  that  this  nervous  apparatus  has 
developed  ;  these  flexion  and  extension  movements  stand- 


486  Habit  and  Accommodatiojt. 

ing  in  place   of  the  pleasure  and  pain-giving   stimuli    to 
which  the  organism  has  become  accommodated.^ 

Now  the  same  effect  of  *  centralization  '  is  seen  in  the 
attention,  as  may  be  gathered  from  the  positions  already 
taken.  Attention  has  been  defined  as  genetically  the 
reverberation  of  the  'excess'  process  as  it  has  become 
fixed  in  habit.  By  the  law  of  '  sensori-motor  association,' 
this  backward  wave  gets  connected  with  all  the  sensory 
processes.  Now  just  in  as  far  as  this  wave  is  the  same 
for  different  sensations,  just  in  so  far  it  tends  to  be  'cen- 
tralized' in  a  constant  function — integrated  into  a  habit 
—  involving  a  regular  set  of  motor  phenomena,  such  as 
the  wrinkling  of  the  brows,  setting  of  the  glottis,  etc., 
always  found  in  acts  of  attention.  The  organism  thus 
acquires  a  habit  of  accoimnodatioii,  on  a  higher  level.  This 
is  attention.  When  memory  and  imagination  appear,  this 
new  form  of  response  enables  the  organism  to  throw  itself 
into  attitudes  favourable  to  the  best  reception  and  assim- 
ilation of  material  of  all  kinds. 

Yet  as  with  pain,  so  here.  This  attention-habit,  this 
centralized  function,  is  not  all  that  the  attention  is.  The 
original  excess  function  must  be  kept  in  view.  No  pre- 
liminary setting  of  attention  is  an  adequate  accommodation 
to  an  intellectual  stimulus  —  an  idea  still  to  be  received; 
it  is  adequate  only  to  hold  stimuli  by  which  it  has  been 
before  excited.  Each  new  accommodation  to  idea  carries  a 
motor  excess  discharge  of  its  own,  and  this  swells  back  into 
the  sense  of  attention,  making  each  act  of  attention,  and 
each  sense-type  of  attention,  different,  as  was  said  above. 

1  I  may  remark  also,  that  this  general  position  secures  a  number  of  minor 
explanations,  which  I  do  not  stop  to  develop,  —  such  as  the  contrast  between 
'  systemic  '  and  '  single-organ  '  pleasures  and  pains. 


Organic  Ccntralizatiou.  487 

The  terms  of  interaction  of  the  two  principles,  finally, 
require  that  the  reaction  maintain  its  stimulus,  and  that 
this  stimulus  again  repeat  the  reaction.  The  one  type  of 
reaction,  therefore,  which  an  organism  must  have,  is  a 
'circular'  or  stimulus-repeating  one.  We  have  found  it 
best  to  name  this  type  of  reaction  Imitation.  This  is  the 
UNIT,  therefore,  the  essential  fact,  of  all  motor-develop- 
ment ;  and  this  shows  the  simplicity  of  the  whole  theory. 

The  place  of  imitation  has  now  been  made  out  in  a 
tentative  way  throughout  the  development  of  the  active 
life.  It  seems  to  be  everywhere.  But  it  is,  of  course,  a 
matter  of  natural  history  that  this  type  of  action  is  of  such 
extraordinary  and  unlooked-for  importance.  If  we  grant 
a  phylogenetic  development  of  mind,  reaction  of  the  imita- 
tive type,  as  defined  above,  may  be  considered  the  mode 
and  the  only  mode  of  the  progressive  adaptation  of  the 
organism  to  its  environment.  The  further  philosophical 
questions  as  to  the  nature  of  mind,  its  worth  and  its 
dignity,  remain  under  adjudication.  We  have  learned  too 
much  in  modern  philosophy  to  argue  from  the  natural 
history  of  a  thing  to  its  ultimate  constitution  and  meaning 
—  and  we  commend  this  consideration  to  the  biologists. 
As  far  as  there  is  a  more  general  lesson  to  be  learned  from 
the  considerations  advanced,  it  is  that  we  should  avoid 
just  this  danger,  i.e.^  of  interpreting  one  kind  of  existence 
for  itself,  in  an  isolated  way,  without  due  regard  to  the 
other  kinds  of  existence  with  which  its  manifestations  are 
mixed  up. 

The  antithesis,  for  example,  between  the  self  and  the 
world  is  not  a  valid  antithesis  psychologically  considered. 
The  self  is  realized  by  taking  in  'copies'  from  the  world, 


488  Habit  and  A ccommodatio7i. 

and  the  world  is  enabled  to  set  higher  copies  only  through 
the  constant  reactions  of  the  individual  self  upon  it. 
Morally  I  am  as  much  a  part  of  society  as  physically  I  am 
a  part  of  the  world's  fauna ;  and  as  my  body  gets  its  best 
explanation  from  the  point  of  view  of  its  place  in  a  zoologi- 
cal scale,  so  morally  I  occupy  a  place  in  the  social  order ; 
and  an  important  factor  in  the  understanding  of  me  is  the 
understanding  of  it. 

The  great  question,  which  is  writ  above  all  natural  his- 
tory records,  is  —  when  put  in  the  phraseology  of  imitation, 
—  What  is  the  final  World-copy,  and  how  did  it  get  itself 
set  ? 


APPENDIX   A. 

NEW   OBSERVATIONS    ON    CHILDREN,    REPORTED    IN 
THIS    WORK. 

^Accompanying  movements/  65. 

Assimilation,  308. 

Attention,  in  drawing,  87 ;  in  speech,  397,  453  f.,  466. 

Bashfulness,  147  ff. 

Colour  perception,  50  fF. 

'Contrariness,'  145  ff. 

Desire,  369,  370. 

Distance  perception,  50  ff.,  76  ff. 

Drawing  by  children,  83  ff. 

Dreaming,  137  ff. 

Effects  of  '  recapitulation,'  32  f. 

Effort,  in  reaching,  58  ff. ;  in  holding  up  head  and  body,  389  f. 

Emotions,  137  ff. 

Epochs  of  development,  18. 

Expression,  facial,  123;  E.  of  pain,  143. 

Games,  360  ff.,  383  ff. 

Generalization,  325. 

Handwriting,  91  ff. 

Imitation,  by  drawing,  87  ff. ;    by  voice  and  hands,  131;    vocal  and 

organic,  294;   of  persons,  115,  118  ff.,  152  ff.,  335  ff.,  354,  357  ff., 

374  ff. ;  persistent,  453  ff. 
Inhibition  of  movement,  127  ff. 
Lies,  337,  note. 
Morals,  429. 

Movements,  of  infants,  81  ff. ;  of  weak-minded  children,  407. 
New  method  of  observation  applied,  36  ff. 
Perception  of  distance  and  colour,  50  ff.,  58  ff. 
Personality,  suggestions  of,  see  Suggestion ;  growth  of,  335  ff. 
^  Physiological  suggestions,'  see  Suggestion. 

489 


490  Appendix  B. 

Reflection,  rise  of,  299. 

Reflexes,  81  ff. 

Recognition,  of  figure,  102;  experiment  on,  316;  of  pictures,  317,  333. 

Right  and  left-handedness,  58  ff. 

Self,  sense  of,  335  ff. 

Suggestion,  in  children,  105  fT.,  299  ;  S.  of  sensations,  108  f. :  physiolog- 
ical, 109  ff . ;  of  sleep,  109,  115  f . ;  of  position  in  bed,  no;  of 
sucking  in  sleep,  112;  of  a  natural  function,  1 13  f. ;  of  personality, 
115,  118  ff.,  152  ff.  (in  bashfulness),  335  ff. ;  of  food  and  clothing, 
117  f . ;  complex,  deliberative,  126  ff .  ;  inhibitory,  143  ff . ;  con- 
trary, 145  ff. ;  experiments  on,  383  f.,  385,  note. 

Sense,  of  locality  on  the  body,  yj  \  of  agency,  134  f.;  of  self,  118  ff., 

335  ff- 
Sleep  indications  in  infants,  140  f. 

Social  sense,  120  ff.,  156  ff.  (in  bashfulness),  338  f.,  357  ff. 
Song,  440,  note. 
Speech,  435,  note  ;  397,  456. 
Sympathy,  333. 
Tracery  imitation,  87  ff. 
Unilateral  reflexes,  82  f. 
Volition,  374  ff.,  427  ff.,  454  f. 
'  Walking  reflex,' 81  f. 
Weak-minded,  movements  of,  407. 


APPENDIX   B. 

CASES  OF  THE  USE  OF  THE  RIGHT  AND  LEFT  HANDS  RE- 
SPECTIVELY, GATHERED  FROM  THE  REPORT  OF  COLONEL 
GARRICK  MALLERY,  ON  '  SIGN  LANGUAGE  AMONG  THE 
NORTH  AMERICAN  INDIANS.'^  BY  LESTER  JONES,  B.A., 
FELLOW    PRINCETON    COLLEGE. 

"  In  the  main  part  of  Colonel  Mallery's  paper,  where  the  cases 
cited  are  used  as  merely  illustrative  of  the  writer's  own  subject, 
the  following  data  for  the  problem  of  right-handedness  have  been 
obtained :  — 

^  First  Annual  Report  of  the  Bureau  of  Ethnology,  Washington,  1879-80. 


Appendix  B.  491 


No.  of  Cases  Left  Hand  Right  Hand  Both  Hands 

cited  used  used  used 

66  I  37  28 

"  In  about  a  thousand  illustrations  appended  to  the  paper 
proper,  the  left  hand  is  used  distinctively  alone  twenty-three 
times. 

"  In  the  same  appendix,  in  a  dialogue  of  a  hundred  and  sixteen 
signs  used,  the  left  hand  acts  distinctively  alone  five  times. 

"  In  the  Natei  narrative  of  seventy-five  signs,  the  left  hand  is 
used  distinctively  alone  three  times,  the  right  hand  twenty-seven 
times. 

"  In  the  Patricio  narrative  of  sixty-six  signs,  the  left  hand  is 
used  distinctively  alone  three  times,  the  right  hand  twenty  times.^ 

"  It  is  worth  observing  that  in  the  dialogue  and  two  narratives, 
making  a  total  of  about  three  hundred  signs,  or  less  than  one-third 
of  the  thousand  signs  cited,  we  find  the  left  hand  used  alone  eleven 
times,  or  about  one-half  the  full  number  of  times  occurring  in  the 
entire  thousand  cases.  This  would  seem  to  indicate  that  the  more 
reflective  the  thought  becomes,  the  more  the  left  hand  figures, 
while  in  the  isolated  more  unpremeditated  forms,  it  is  the  right 
hand  that  invariably  springs  into  action. 

"  Two  illustrations  must  suffice  to  show  the  general  preference 
of  the  right  hand  over  the  left.  In  describing  Indians  conversing 
about  the  camp-fire,  Mr.  Mallery  writes  (p.  340)  :  '  Two  Indians 
whose  blankets  are  closely  held  to  their  bodies  by  the  left  hand, 
which  is  necessarily  rendered  unavailable  for  gesture,  will  severally 
thrust  the  right  from  beneath  the  protecting  fold,  and  converse 
freely.  The  same  is  true  when  one  hand  of  each  holds  the  bridle 
of  a  horse.'  Again,  this  preference  is  well  shown  in  the  gesture 
sign  for  sunrise  (p.  371)  :  'The  forefinger  of  the  right  hand  is 
crooked  to  represent  the  sun's  disc,  and  pointed  or  extended  to 
the  left,  then  slightly  elevated. 

" '  In  this  connection  it  may  be  noted  that  when  the  gesture  is 
carefully  made  in  open  country,  the  pointing  would  generally  be 

1  In  the  above  series,  only  those  cases  have  been  considered  in  which  the 
circumstances  involved  allow  a  choice  of  either  hand. 


492  Appendix  B. 

to  the  east,  and  the  body  turned  so  that  its  left  would  be  in  that 
direction.' 

"  The  two-hand  movement  in  making  a  sign  is  used,  perhaps,  as 
much  as  the  right  hand  alone ;  yet  in  almost  every  case  of  the 
double-hand  movement  the  right  hand  takes  the  initiative  and 
plays  the  active  role,  with  the  left  as  merely  supplementary.  For 
example,  the  sign  gesture  for  '  hard  '  is  made  thus  :  open  the  left 
hand  and  strike  against  it  several  times  with  the  right. 

"Again,  in  making  the  sign  gesture  for  'done,'  hold  the  extended 
left  hand  horizontally  before  the  body,  fingers  pointing  to  the  right, 
and  cut  edgewise  downward,  with  extended  right  hand,  past  the 
tips  of  the  left. 

"  Many  signs  appearing  to  be  made  by  the  left  hand  alone, 
on  closer  scrutiny  can  be  included  in  the  two-hand  movement. 
For  example,  in  the  expression  'three  white  men,'  'white  men'  is 
made  first  with  right  hand  alone ;  but  to  convey  the  meaning,  the 
right  hand  must  persist  until  the  sign  for  three  is  made,  which 
remains  for  the  left  hand  to  do.  It  is  in  reahty  a  double-hand 
movement  with  the  left  to  be  used  as  necessity  requires,  supple- 
mentary to  the  right." 

Note  by  the  Author.  —  It  is  evident  that  this  report  supports  the  view 
that  the  right  hand  was  pre-eminently  the  *  expressive '  member  in  pre-historic 
times.  The  cof?imon  signs  among  different  tribes,  found  also  in  deaf-mute 
sign  language,  show  that  many  of  these  forms  of  expression  are  not  late  con- 
ventions, but  rather  matter  of  real  aboriginal  usage.  If,  then,  they  date  back 
to  the  period  before  the  development  of  speech,  we  have  much  reason  for 
believing  that  right-handedness  is  originally  a  one-sided  expressive  function. 
Cf.  Chap.  IV.,  §  2,  above. 


INDEX. 


Aboulia,  398  ff. 

Abstraction,  328. 

Accommodation,  effects  of,  24;  sugges- 
tion as  A.,  167  f. ;  A.  and  Habit,  214  f. ; 
A.  in  expression,  230  f. ;  in  memory, 
292  ff. ;  summary  of,  477  ff. 

Adaptation,  organic,  170  ff . ;  current 
theory  of,  180  ff. 

Adults,  suggestions  in,  135. 

Agency,  sense  of,  124  f. 

Agraphia,  398  ff.,  409  f.,  432  ff. 

Amusia,  440  ff. 

Analogies,  of  development,  15  ff. 

Animal,  see  Phylogenesis,  Memory,  Re- 
capitulation, Attention,  Gregariousness. 

Antithesis,  law  of,  242  ff. ;  A.  and  antago- 
nism, 245  ff. 

Aphasia,  398  ff.,  409  f.,  433  ff. 

Apperception,  theory  of,  308  ff. 

Apraxia,  311. 

Assimilation,  theory  of,  308  ff. 

Association  of  ideas,  physical  basis  of, 
279  ff. ;  origin  of,  361  ff. ;  sensori- 
motor, 459  ff. 

Attention,  87,  380;  its  genetic  formula, 
312  f.,  331  f.,  395  f. ;  origin  of,  451  ff. ; 
voluntary,  451  f. ;  reflex,  458  f. ;  develop- 
ment of,  459  ff. ;  animal  A.,  470  ff. ;  A. 
as  Habit,  486  f. 

Attitudes,  motor,  origin  of,  221  ff. ;  ha- 
bitual, 239  ff. 

Auto-suggestion,  138  f. 

Avenarius,  R.,  339  f. 

Baillarger,  434. 

Bain,  A.,  81,  177,  181  ff;  196,  note;  356, 

note;  483. 
Balfour,  F.  M.,  34,  206. 
Bashfulness,  147  ff. 
Bastian,  470. 
Bateson.  206,  note. 


Belief,  323  f.,  471  f. 
Bernheim,  168,  423. 
Binet,  A.,  39  f.,  55,  273. 
Bradley,  469,  note. 
Brazier,  440  ff. 
Brentano,  322. 
Broadbent,  103,  note. 
Brown-Sequard,  72,  note. 
Bunge,  273. 

Carpenter,  440. 

Cattell,  J.  M.,  82,  note ;  325. 

'  Centralization,'  organic,  481  ff. 

Charcot,  164,  404. 

Children,  their   games,   360   ff.,   383    f . ; 

weak-minded,  407  f. ;  see  Infant. 
'  Chumming,'  by  children,  358  ff. 
Class  recognition,  330  ff. 
Clifford,  19. 

Colour,  perception  of,  by  infants,  39  ff.,  50  ff. 
Conception,  origin  of,  322  ff. 
Consciousness,  the  origin  of,  208  ff. 
Contrary  suggestions,  145  f. 
Control,  by  suggestion,  144;    voluntary, 

472  f. 
Criminal  suggestion,  163. 
Cushing,  F.  H.,  67,  note. 

Darwin,  C,  185,  233,  241  ff. ;  247,  note; 
288,  347. 

Delboeuf,  355. 

Deliberation,  372  f. 

Deliberative  suggestion,  126  ff.,  372. 

Desire,  368  ff. 

Dessoir,  483. 

Development,  analogies  of,  15  ff. ;  theories 
of,  170  ff. ;  summary  on,  477  ff. ;  D.  of 
the  several  functions,  see  Memory, 
Attention,  Association,  Speech,  Hand- 
writing, Song,  etc. 

Dewey,  J.,  79,  note. 


493 


494 


Index. 


Direct  nervous  action,  law  of,  249  ff. 

Distance,  perception  of,  by  infants,  51  ff. 

Drawings,  of  children,  83  ff. 

Dreams,  as  emotion  stimulus,  137. 

Dutrochet,  276. 

Dynamogenic    method    of   child   study, 

37  ff- 
Dynamogenesis,  165  ff. 

Echolalia,  403. 

Effort,  rise  of,  372  f. 

Egger,  v.,  36. 

Eimer,  271  f, 

'Eject,'  119  ff.,  338  ff. 

Emotion,  stimulated  by  dreams,  137;  ex- 
pressions of,  223,  etc. ;  genetic  theory 
of,  332  ff. ;  of  sympathy,  333  f. ;  of  self, 
334  ff. ;  ethical,  341  ff. 

Engelmann,  271,  273,  276. 

Ethical  emotion,  genesis  of,  341  ff. 

Exaltation  of  the  senses,  140  f.,  160. 

'  Excess,'  law  of,  179  f.,  189. 

Expectation,  sense  of,  326. 

Expression,  functions  of,  69  ff. ;  motor  E., 
221  ff. ;  emotional  E.,  223  ff. 

Fechner,  65  ;   100,  note. 

Fere,  Ch.,  44;   138,  note;  436,  448. 

Ferrier,  422. 

Flechsig,  423. 

Foster,  M.,  22. 

Franckl-Hochwart,  71,  419. 

Frankhn,  Mrs.  C.  L.,  57,  note;  43,  note. 

Galton,  206,  note. 

Games,  360  ff.,  383  f. 

General  notion,  origin  of,  325  ff. 

Goldscheider,  93,  note;  98  ff.,  483. 

Gowers,  420. 

Gregariousness,  18  f.,  119  ff. 

V.  Gudden,  424,  note. 

Gurney,  E.,  356,  note. 

Habit,  effects  of,  21;  Suggestion  as  H., 
165  ff. ;  H.  and  Accommodation,  214  f. ; 
law  of  associated  H.,  242  ff. ;  as  basis 
of  unity,  286 ;  in  memory,  292  ft. ;  sum- 
mary on,  476  ff. 

Handwriting,  origin  of,  91  ff. 

Hedonic,  consciousness,  176  f. ;  H.  ex- 
pression, 237  ff. 

Hegel,  346,  note. 


Hegler,  274. 

Heredity,  204  ff. 

Hodge,  272,  note. 

Hoffding,   H.,  190,  197,  315,  449  f.,  459; 

462,  note  ;  472,  note. 
Hume,  330. 

Hypnotic  suggestion,  158  ff.,  425. 
Hysteria,  403  ff. 

Identity,  principle  of,  322  f. 

Ideo-motor  suggestion,  130  ff. 

Idiots,  409  f. 

Imagination,  origin  of,  291  ff. 

Imitation,  tracery,  86  ff. ;  in  infants,  130  ff. ; 
simple  and  persistent,  132  f.,  375  f., 
392  ff . ;  organic,  263  ff.,  350  f. ;  con- 
scious, 191  ff.,  351  f . ;  in  animals,  297; 
classification  of,  349  ff. ;  plastic,  352  ff. ; 
methodof  observing,  357  ff. ;  persistent, 

374  ff 

Infant ;  I.  Psychology,  i  ff. ;  new  method  of 
studying,  36  ff. ;  colour  perception  of, 
39  ff. ;  distance  perception  of,  51  ff. ; 
right-handedness  in,  58  ff. ;  movements 
of,  81;  drawings  of,  83  ff. ;  sense  of 
agency  in,  124  f. ;  imitations  of,  130  ff., 
373  ff. ;  attention  of,  87,  380. 

Inhibitory  suggestion,  143  ff. ;  facts  of, 
294  f. 

Intra-selection,  31. 

'  Introjection,'  theory  of,  339. 

James,  W.,  tj,  193,  226,  229,  246,  253,376, 
392,  405,  449,  452 ;  76,  note ;  79,  note ; 
237,  note. 

Janet,  Pierre,  106;  355,  note;  378,  note; 

397.  404  f-.  408,  434  ff- 
Jastrow,  J.,  44,  188. 
Jones,  Lester,  68,  note ;  Appendix  B. 
Judgment,  Brentano's  view  of,  323. 

Kant,  296. 
Kingsley,  15,  note. 
V.  Kries,  445  ff. 
Kuhne,  271. 
Kussmaul,  114,  438. 

Ladd,  G.  T.,  79,  note ;  135,  459. 
Lange's  theory  of  emotion,  229. 
Lehmann,  A.,  42,  315,  449. 
Lichtheim,  114,  412  ff.,  438. 
Liebault,  113. 
Liegeois,  116,  note. 


Index. 


495 


Magendie,  44. 

Maine  de  Biran,  392. 

Mallery,  68,  note ;  Appendix  B. 

Mantagazza,  261. 

Marshall,  H.  M.,  28,  34. 

Mazel,  67,  note. 

Memory,  physical  basis  of,  279  ff. ;  origin 

of,  291  ff. 
Method  of  child  study,  36  ff. 
Meynert,  177  f. ;  M.'s  'scheme,'  193,  422, 

483- 
Micro-organisms,  behaviour  of,  272  ff. 
Mills,  420,  note. 
Mirror-writing,  99. 
Moll,  112. 

Movements,  of  infants,  81  ff. 
Muller,  Max,  36. 
Miinsterbcrg,    47,    note ;    65,   note ;   471, 

note  ;  178,  note  ;  483,  484  f. 
Music,  faculty  of,  70  f. 

Nancy  school,  on  hypnotism,  163,  164. 
Natural   selection,  place  of,  in  develop- 
ment, 172  ff. 
Neo-Darwinian  theory  of  heredity,  204  ff. 
Neo-Lamarkian  theory  of  heredity,  207  ff. 
Nichols,  H.,  483. 

Obedience,  lesson  of,  343  f. 

Ochorowicz,  112;  119,  note. 

O'Connor,  J.  T.,  73,  note. 

Ogle,  73,  note. 

Ontogenesis,  i  ff . ;    of  volition,  373  ff. ; 

variations  in,  20  ff.,  426  ff. 
Oppenheim,  70,  419. 
Organic,  selection,  174  f. ;  O.  imitation, 

263  ff. 
Osborn,  H.  F.,  23,  note. 

Pain,  suggestions  of,  143  f ;  its  nervous 
analogue,  176  f ;  Bain's  and  Spencer's 
views  of,  185  f. ;  as  sensation,  483  ff. 

Parrot,  423. 

Paris  school,  on  hypnotism,  158,  164. 

Passy,  396. 

Paulhan,  443  ;  460,  note. 

'  Persistent  imitation,'  132  f.,  374  ff , 
392  ff. 

Personality,  suggestions  of,  118  ff ;  its 
growth,  357  ff. ;    147  ff.,  334  ff. 

Pfeffer.  274  ff. 

Phylogenesis,  12  ff. ;  of  memory  and 
imagination,  319  ff. ;  of  volition,  385  ff. ; 
variations  due  to,  20  ff ,  426  ff. 


Pick,  402,  416. 

Pitch,  recognition  of,  442  ff. 

Pitres,  416. 

Plants,  movements  of,  274  ff. 

'  Plastic  imitation,'  352  ff. 

Pleasure,  its  nervous  analogue,  176  f ; 
Spencer-Bain  view  of,  185  f. ;  as  sen- 
sation, 484  f 

Preyer,  W.,  39  f ,  53  f ,  81,  131,  297,  389  f  ; 
132,  note. 

'  Project,'  18  f ,  119  ff.,  336  ff. 

Psychology,  race,  12  ff. ;  infant,  i  ff. 

Punishment,  function  of,  343. 

Race  psychology,  12  ff 

Rapport,  hypnotic,  161. 

'  Reevolution,'  Jacksonian,  402  f. 

Recapitulation,  theory  of,  14  ff. ;  modifi- 
cations of,  20  ff ,  426  ff. 

Recognition,  theory  of,  308  ff. ;  class-R., 
330  ff;  of  pitch,  442  ff . ;  absolute, 
442  ff. 

Reflexes,  infants',  81  f 

Reid,  389. 

'  Release,'  or  '  trigger-'  action,  in  plants, 

27s  f- 
Ribot,  Th.,  III. 
Richet,  Ch.,  178,  483. 
Right-handedness,  origin  of,  58  ff. 
Romanes,G.  J.,  71,73;  199,  note  ;  210  ff., 

218  ff.,  261,  299. 
Ross,  416. 
Royce,  J.,  330,  note ;  339,  note ;  347. 

Schmidkunz,  106. 

Schneider,  iii. 

Schultz,  271. 

Sedgwick,  A.,  32,  34. 

Seglas,  434  ff 

Selection,  natural,  172  f  ;  organic,  174  f 

Self,  growth  of  notion  of,  119  ff ;  147  A- ; 

emotion  of,  334  ff 
Sense-exaltation,  140  f 
'  Sensori-motor  association,'  459  ff. 
Sentiment,  growth  of,  332  ff. 
Shinn,  Miss  M.  W.,  41,  note ;  53. 
'  Short-cuts,'  theory  of  20  ff 
Sighele,  282  f  ;  346,  note  ;  353. 
Sleep,  suggestions  of,  114  ff.,  140  ff. 
Soltmann,  421  f 
Song,  438  ff 

Speech,  409  ff.,  431  ff.,  466  ff 
Spencer,  H.,  181  ff.,  276,  200,  note. 


496 


Index. 


Spontaneity,  Bain's  doctrine  of,  183  ff. 

Starr,  M.  A.,  71. 

Stimuli,  analogous,  253  ff. ;  substitutions 
of,  257  f. 

Strieker,  98,  433,  443. 

Stumpf,  438. 

Subconscious  suggestion,  135  if. 

Substitution  of  stimuli,  law  of,  257  f. 

Sufficient  reason,  323  f. 

Suggestion,  104  ff. ;  physiological  S.,109  f. ; 
sensori-motor,  114  ff. ;  of  sleep,  etc., 
114  ff.,  140  ff. ;  of  personality,  118  ff. ; 
deliberative,  126  ff.,  372;  ideo-motor, 
130  ff. ;  subconscious  adult,  135  ff. ;  of 
tunes,  135  ff. ;  auto-S.,  138  f. ;  inhibi- 
tory, 143 ;  pain-S.,  143  f. ;  control-S., 
144 ;  S.  of  the  contrary,  145  ff. ;  hyp- 
notic, 158  ff.;  criminal,  163. 

Sully,  293. 

Sympathy,  genesis  of,  333  f. 

Tarde,  G.,  232  f. ;  346,  note ;  353  f. 

Thought,  origin  of,  322  ff. 

Tonnies,  348. 

Tracery  imitation,  86  ff. 

Tunes,  suggestions  of,  135  ff. ;  internal, 

438  ff. 
Types,  mental,  432  ff. 


Unconscious  writing,  406. 
Unity,  sense  of,  286. 

Variations,  in  ontogeny,  20  fF. 

Verworn,  Max,  271  f.,  276. 

Vierordt,  66,  note;  72,  note;  73,  note; 
422. 

'  Vitalism,'  the  new,  277  f. 

Volition,  origin  of,  367  ff. ;  analysis  of, 
367  ff. ;  typical  case  of,  373  ff. ;  phylo- 
genesis of,  385  ff. 

Waitz,  330. 

Wallace,  A.  R.,  288. 

Wallaschek,  440 ;  464,  note. 

Waller,  A.  D.,  274;  414,  note. 

Ward,   J.,   457;     193,   note;    200,  note; 

317,  note. 
Weber,  E.  H.,  65. 
Weismann,  31, 
Wernicke,  416,  438. 
'  Will-stimulus,'  376  f. 
Wilson,  Sir  D.,  59,  note ;   66,  note ;  73, 

note ;  74,  note. 
Wundt,  106,  309,  315,  332. 

Ziehen,  107,  455  f. 


BALDWIN'S 

HANDBOOK  OF  PSYCHOLOGY. 

VOL.   I.      SENSES  AND   INTELLECT. 

By  James  Mark  Baldwin,  Professor  in  Princeton  University,     xiv  +  343  pp. 
8vo.     Second  Edition.     Teachers' price,  1 2j.  6^.;   $1.80. 

VOL.   II.      FEELING  AND  WILL. 

xii  +  394  pp.      8vo.      Teachers'  price,  12^.  dd.;  ^2.00. 


Revue  Philosophique.  —  "An  excellent  treatise  on  Psychology,  superior,  and 
much  superior,  to  perhaps  any  other  that  we  know.  ...  It  is  profound  without 
losing  in  clearness,  and  complete  without  being  too  long." 

Nature.  —  "Well  arranged,  carefully  thought  out,  clearly  and  tersely  written,  it 
will  be  welcomed  in  this  country  as  it  has  been  welcomed  in  America." 

Mind  {London).  —  "  It  is  interesting  to  see  the  scholastic  petrifaction  of  Aristotle 
which,  in  various  ways,  has  been  handed  on  or  restored  in  modern  times  .  .  . 
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emphasis  as  a  very  serviceable  manual  for  students." 

The  Nation.  —  "  Taken  as  a  whole  it  is  about  the  best  we  know." 

Revista  de  filosofia  scientifica.  — "  Uniting  with  great  ability  the  new  and  the 
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refined  outlines  of  the  classical  scheme,  he  has  succeeded  in  producing  a  work 
on  Psychology  which  is  valuable  and  noteworthy,  especially  as  an  attempt  at  the 
conciliation  of  the  two  schools." 

Friedrich  JodI  in  Zeitschrift  fur  Philos.  unu  Philos.  Kritik.— "A  merit 
of  the  work  of  J.  M.  B.  is  that  it  maintains  the  standpoint  of  exact  method.  .  .  . 
Most  of  the  chapters  are  rich  in  material,  terse  and  vigorous  in  form,  logical  in 
arrangement.  The  whole  thoroughly  serves  its  purpose  as  an  exponent  of  the 
educational  literature  of  Psychology  in  which  the  Americans  and  English  are  far 
ahead  of  us,  and  which  makes  for  higher  culture  in  general." 

Oxford  Magazine.  —  "Senses  and  Intellect  is  the  best  manual  we  have  seen, 
and  we  look  forward  to  the  companion  volume." 

Manchester  Guardian.  —  "A  noteworthy  addition  to  psychological  literature." 

Academy.  —  "To  those  in  search  of  a  general  systematic  account  of  mental 
phenomena,  thoroughly  informed,  and  embodying  the  results  of  the  most  recent 
inquiry,  Professor  Baldwin's  '  Handbook '  may  be  most  cordially  commended. 
It  is  indeed  just  the  book  a  genuine  student  needs." 

Scotsman.  —  "The  work  is  one  of  the  most  noteworthy  that  have  appeared  in 
recent  times  to  vindicate  the  claims  and  establish  the  position  of  Psychology  as  an 
independent  science.  .  .  .  The  book  is  certainly  a  most  able  one,  and  one  which 
cannot  fail  to  make  its  mark  as  a  contribution  to  psychological  study." 


BALDWIN'S 

ELEMENTS  OF  PSYCHOLOGY. 

By  James  Mark  Baldwin,  Professor  in  Princeton  College,      xvi  +  372  pp. 
i2mo.     Teachers' price,  7^. ;   ^1.50. 


Mind.  —  "We  congratulate  Professor  Baldwin  on  having  succeeded  in  his  main 
aim.  He  has  produced  a  really  good  text-book  for  elementary  classes,  presentmg 
the  newest  essentials  of  the  science  in  a  simple,  compact  volume  at  reasonable 
cost." 

University  Correspondent.  —  "  It  is  on  the  whole  a  good  piece  of  work,  and  we 
do  not  know  an  elementary  book  on  psychology  which  we  would  prefer  to  this  for 
the  use  of  a  beginner." 

G.  M.  Duncan,  Professor  in  Yale  University,  in  PSYCHOLOGICAL  REVIEW.— 
"  We  regard  it  on  the  whole  as  the  best  elementary  text-book  on  psychology  now 
before  the  public.  It  is  written  from  the  scientific  standpoint,  and  in  a  thoroughly 
scientific  spirit,  by  one  versed  in  the  literature  and  acquainted  with  the  latest 
advances  of  the  science." 

Journal  of  Education  (London).  — "  We  doubt  if  a  better  introduction  to 
mental  science  has  yet  been  written." 

Lloyd  Morgan  in  Nature.  —  "  It  appears  to  us  to  possess  the  great  merit  of 
giving  abundant  evidence  of  independent  thought  and  treatment.  It  will,  in  the 
hands  of  senior  students,  stimulate  them  to  thought  and  criticism ;  such  criticism 
as  the  teacher  who  is  in  earnest  welcomes  like  a  breath  of  keen  fresh  air," 

Revista  critica  de  filosofia.  — "  This  book  is  full  of  exact  and  finished  analysis, 
replete  with  facts,  lucid  in  style  and  arrangement.  We  do  not  hesitate  to  recom- 
mend its  translation  [into  Italian]," 


LONDON : 
MACMILLAN   &   CO. 


NEW  YORK: 
HENRY    HOLT   &   CO. 


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